“Dear Sir or Madam would you read my book. It took me years to write, will you take a look…” —The Beatles, Paperback Writer
2022 was the first full year I had no teaching responsibilities, which meant more time for writing and more time for submitting my work to journals. Many writers I know would rather scrub toilets than submit their work, but I’ve generally liked the “submissions” process, a word that really should be reframed (as one of my mentors pointed out) as “offering” your work to others, rather than submitting to anything or anyone.
Why do so many writers hate submitting? Because it sets us up for rejection. Most literary journals reject at least 80-90% of what’s offered to them. And the top journals accept less than 1%. A rejection can easily be (mis)interpreted by our inner critic and societal expectations as a message that you are a bad writer. But really, this isn’t about you. Having been a reader for journals and residency applications, I’ve seen a lot of good work that gets passed over, simply because there’s so much of it. The process of winnowing down to find the best fit for a particular venue can be excruciating. So rather than thinking of rejection as being a condemnation of my work or my writing abilities, I think of it more like playing the lottery or entering a raffle. Likely, I’m not going to win, but occasionally, I do… and that’s lovely.
I’ve also made it a point not to let any rejection bother me for more than 10 minutes. Well… occasionally 15, if the rejection’s accompanied by a snarky letter (which is rare, but has happened). And that is a very good New Year’s resolution to have. A second one might be a goal to accumulate 100 rejections in 2023.
I had a better than average year for submissions in 2022:
–24 journals/anthologies accepted 28 poems. 48 poetry submissions were rejected; 42 are pending.
–Fiction was more typical. I submitted short stories to 31 journals. 1 was accepted, 25 rejected, 5 pending.
–For essays, I had 1 acceptance, 9 rejections, and 4 pending.
And most exciting, my fourth book, Immigrants, a short-story collection was accepted after accumulating only 15 rejections!
So, adding up the numbers, while I’m delighted about 27 acceptances, I only got 97 rejections in 2022. Hope I do better in 2023.
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I, too, set soft goals for rejections. I have a list of “pending” pieces and ones that “have not yet been rejected” along with “rejections.” This helps me to remember that acceptance is an anomaly. And if it takes a long time before I’m rejected, I tell myself that’s a win – the editors were *agonizing* over whether to include my piece!
Absolutely, Mistinguette. That’s a win. And it’s also a win when you get a more personal rejection that says your work came close or that they want to see more of it.
Thanks, Dina! I met you this morning at The Writing Room. I like collecting 100 rejections–I’m going to try to achieve that goal.
Yay!
You are always so generous in sharing your process as a prompt to support other writers. I wanted to sign up for this blog, but I don’t actually see a button or way to do that
Thanks Carolyn,
If you go to https://ddinafriedman.com/blog/ and scroll all the way down to the bottom left corner and you should see a subscription box. If you still can’t find it, let me know and I’ll manually add you to the list.