Every Time I Think I’m Done, I Write Again
By Rumaisa Reza
I know it’s been a while. Sometimes it feels like I’m circling inside an endless loop of rejection, as if the same door keeps swinging shut no matter how many times I gather the courage to knock. Each “no” folds into the next, tightening around me until hope feels fragile, almost foolish. I tell myself not to care so much, not to expect anything. And yet, the moment I hit submit, something inside me rises. It always does. And then it falls.
Some days it feels like I am swimming in a sea I was never taught to survive. The water rises inch by inch, and I keep telling myself that if I just stay afloat a little longer, something will change. But each rejection drags at my ankles, pulls me under for a moment longer than the last. I surface shaken, unsure of how many more times I can resurface at all. I never imagined that the thing I loved most—writing, the one place where I have always felt safe—could become the very thing that makes me doubt whether I belong here at all.
The hardest part isn’t even the rejection itself. It’s what it does to the story I tell myself about who I am. Each “thank you, but—” email feels like a quiet correction. Maybe you’re not as good as you think. Maybe this dream isn’t meant for you. I thought repetition would dull the pain, teach me resilience. Instead, it carves deeper doubt. I stare at my drafts and feel them turn against me. I close my laptop and tell myself I am done.
And for a few hours, or days, I believe it.
I imagine a version of myself who no longer checks her inbox with trembling hands. A version who doesn’t measure time in submission deadlines. A version who sleeps earlier, who protects her heart from this steady ache. There is relief in that imagining. There is peace in the idea of walking away.
But the relief never lasts.
The ache returns. A sentence forms while I am brushing my teeth. An image refuses to leave my mind. I hear a line of dialogue and feel that familiar tightening in my chest, maybe not dread, but recognition. The page calls in the smallest voice possible. It isn’t a dramatic call or a heroic pull, just a quiet patience waiting for me to respond.
And every time, I answer.
I open the laptop again. I scroll through the draft I swore I would abandon. I change one word. Then another. The act is small, almost invisible from the outside. But it is an act of return. I am not returning because I feel confident. I am returning because something in me cannot bear to leave the story unfinished. Writing may wound me, but it is also the only place where I feel most myself.
This is the cycle I live in: rejection, doubt, retreat. And then, inevitably, return.
I used to think that being a writer meant certainty. That one day I would wake up immune to rejection, thick-skinned and steady. Instead, I remain tender. Every “no” still lands. I still question whether I am chasing a mirage. I still wonder if all these late nights will amount to anything tangible. But the doubt is no longer the only thing I feel. Beneath the doubt, connection has been there all along, more enduring.
And for that, I always come back.
Not because I am fearless. Not because I am sure of success. But because the act of writing feels necessary in a way that success does not. When I am not writing, something in me feels suspended, unfinished. The world grows louder. My thoughts grow heavier. The page, for all its cruelty, remains the one place where I can breathe.
Perhaps resilience does not look like growing numb. Perhaps it looks like remaining soft and returning anyway.
Every time I think I am done, I write again.
I no longer wait for the shore to appear before I move. Maybe there is no final shore. Maybe the point is not arrival but endurance, the quiet decision to keep swimming even when the water rises. The rejections may continue. The doubt may never fully disappear. But as long as I keep returning to the page, I have not lost the most essential thing.
To me, that is what it truly means to be a writer. Maybe returning is the only point. Maybe I was never meant to return, only to continue.
And for now, that is enough.
Rumaisa Reza is a writer from Bangladesh. She is currently serving as a teen editor for Inlandia Literary Magazine and as a judge for Five Minutes (The Hallway for High School Writers) in its first contest. Her work has appeared in Write the World and The Words Faire, with forthcoming publications in NUNUM and Levitate. She is drawn to emotionally grounded writing that explores vulnerability, growth, and the quiet transformations that shape us. You can find her on Instagram at: @rumaisa_reza_90