It’s a difficult topic to write about, especially when you’re a writer like me who doesn’t have the cushion of resounding success to surround myself with when writing about such a sensitive topic, but I’ve been meaning to mention it for a while.
I said on my Facebook page a long time ago that I’d list every single rejection I got so people who saw my successes could know nothing is just being handed to me.
However, I decided not to do that mostly because I worried potential agents or publishers might see that page and the list of rejections and decide I’m not the writer for them. It’s a pretty cowardly way out of a goal I had made, and so I’ve been toying around with the idea of trying to at least explain my headspace for rejections.
I think what’s galvanized me to write now, finally, about this was a friend saying that he doesn’t have the courage to submit out of a fear of rejection.
Rejections hurt. You pour your soul into a piece of writing, you wait sometimes half a year for any answer, and you get form responses: “Thank you for submitting this piece to us. While we enjoyed it very much, unfortunately, we can’t find a place for it at this time. Please note this business is highly subjective, and this in no way reflects on the quality of your writing.” That’s the usual response.
I’ve had worse responses, however, ranging from just a “Pass” as the entire email to the suggestion I read the works they’ve published already so I could “get a sense of what good writing is.” It’s been a lot of being kicked when I’m already down – I go weeks without any response from any magazine, then suddenly three rejections show up in a row in my inbox.
You start to feel like the entire world has read your works, and they’re just not interested.
Several things are helping me to just keep going anyway.
I can’t stop
First, I have this innate drive to be a writer. Since I was six, that’s been my life’s dream – professional author. I don’t even know how to quit, as I think I’ve said before; I have to write.
Sometimes I get worn out from writing and will take a break for a bit, but there’s always this part of me that thinks something is profoundly missing in my otherwise content life. And as soon as I start writing, I feel whole again. Life comes together for me when I’m writing.
Therefore, even if I want to quit, I can’t.
I suppose I could be a writer who hides my works away on the computer, never to see the light of day, but more than anything else, I’m looking to talk to anyone who reads my stuff and is as excited about it as I am. I want to geek out on this stuff with someone else, and I can’t do that if it’s on my desktop.
I’m not alone
Second, it’s important to know that most people who want to be an author will get rejections. Lots of them. Considering the sheer number of people who want to be authors, that’s just what’s going to happen.
A site called The Grinder is acting like a double-edge sword in driving home this point for me. On the one hand, users can log every rejection they get, and there’s an updated list on the main page of every rejection logged for the most recent couple of days.
On the other hand, it also lists all the acceptances.
Nothing is more heartwarming than seeing a long list of people logging their rejections and realizing you’re not at all alone, and nothing is more heartbreaking than seeing people get into magazines or publications you’ve been trying to get into for years.
There are also online writer communities that I’ve had mixed results with joining, but it can feel nice to commiserate with fellow writers about rejections.
Just submit anyway
I make it a point to make the vast majority of my submissions only to places where submitting is free. I understand a lot of magazines need money to keep running, and they get that from submitters, but I just hate the idea of paying someone to reject my stuff. I don’t want to pay someone to publish my stuff either, though, which is why free submissions are so great.
Since I make it a point of doing free submissions (about 99.99% of the time), I figure there’s no real harm in submitting to a place if I think I have a story that might work for them. Of course, I scope out the site first and see if what I’m writing would fit with them, but I can be wrong a lot, too, and I don’t have time to read every single piece listed to see if I sound just like everyone else they publish (I’m not trying to anyway).
Therefore, the only thing I’m wasting is my time every now and then submitting to a place that ultimately doesn’t work out.
But this site I personally like called Chillsubs pointed out a while back that even if a place rejects you, don’t give up if you have other stuff you think would work for them. They said sometimes there’s an editor among the others who really loved your stuff and fought for you, and they’ll want to see your stuff appear again to fight for you again until you get in.
Or maybe at one point the story you submitted didn’t work, but another time another story did for the same publication. That can happen. A lot of the time, I think, literary magazines are just looking for cohesion in what they’re going to publish at any given time, and so sometimes what you write just isn’t fitting with what they’re going for at that time. That’s ok – it’s not a poor reflection on you and your writing, I think.
Unless someone specifically says my writing is a joke (and that one recommending I read their published works to get a sense of what good writing is has come the closest to this), I’m going to just assume someone rejected my writing because it didn’t work for them just then. That doesn’t mean it won’t work for everyone.
So submit.
Because the only guaranteed rejection is never submitting in the first place.