ALEKSANDAR HEMON: I used to write a lot for magazines and radio in Sarajevo, which taught me that writing is evanescent: magazines are thrown away, and radio moments exist briefly and then they perish. That experience gave me a different take on rejection, inasmuch as it prevented me from taking myself too seriously, which obviously makes rejection less painful. Anyone who thinks that writing can make him or her immortal is a damn fool. Writing is inherently a symptom of mortality—t lives and dies with or without you, regardless of acceptance or rejection. Furthermore, I think that a writer should know when something is good-being able to recognize what works and what doesn't is a pare of the job-which means that the acceptance-rejection thing only pertains to the career aspect of the writing, and that never depends on the writer anyway. If you start waiting for the reviews to tell you whether your book is good, it's time to do something else.