Category Archives: submissions

My Father’s Files

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Tomorrow is my father’s birthday. Had he not died a year and a half ago, he would have been 95 years old.

Last month, during a weekend visit to my childhood home in Queens, I read through a chunk my father’s files. My brother had already started this process and created a spreadsheet with name of each folder, a brief description of the contents, and suggestions on what to do after I reviewed it. A few folders were labeled, “keep.” Most said “read and discard.”

And even though I’m the one often chiding my partner about his insistence on holding onto things he doesn’t need, I found it really hard to throw most of these files away. Not because there was anything extraordinary. Mostly I read through correspondence related to his job: thank you letters from people who appeared on the public affairs talk show, Straight Talk, which he produced for WWOR-TV (way before it was owned by Fox) as well as several letters of appreciation and a smattering of complaints. Not surprising, since he didn’t shy away from controversial issues in the talk show, nor in the documentaries he wrote and produced for the station, though he was meticulously ethical about the obligation to present different points of view, back in the days when the FCC’s fairness doctrine demanded balanced media.

There was another file folder where he kept his attempts to market his outside writing: TV scripts and plays in his early years, before he settled into his professional life, and a memoir he attempted after he retired. That file was filled with rejection letters from agents back in the days when agents actually wrote letters and didn’t simply ghost you. I threw away all the ones that said, blah, blah–doesn’t meet our needs, but I kept the ones that were specific, like this one from May 1, 1952:

I even kept this nastier one, because, hey, chances are we’ve all gotten letters like this once in a while. (I have, at least. I hope those of you who are also writers haven’t.)

Even though he never sold any scripts, he persisted. Because writing for the sake of writing, whether or not it got published, meant something to him. In fact, falling asleep every night to the clack of his manual typewriter was one of the first inspirations that led me to becoming a writer.

I’m hoping I’ll find just the right moment to shred all my embarrassing teenage diaries, love letters from old boyfriends, angsty journal entries, and more angsty journal entries disguised as faltering poems and thinly disguised failed fiction, because, yes, I also hold onto things I really don’t need, and because–God forbid–I don’t want my children or grandchildren, or any other relatives stumbling upon them after I die. But at the same time, I’m thankful to my father that he kept so much of his life intact in those folders, and that I can choose some of them to hold onto, even if he’s no longer there.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Stanley Friedman, age 91. Photo by Shel Horowitz

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Fan Bases, Humility, and Publication Success

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Up until about a week ago, 2026 felt like an off-year for writing. I’d done my homework: 40 poetry and 8 Fiction/Essay submissions so far. However, nearly all of it, except for a very small smattering, was coming back with a no.

This is not a complaint or a boo-hoo moment, and, as I’ve counseled others, I didn’t take it personally. But I’d been used to a slightly higher (10-12%) batting average than what I’d been getting. True, I might have been skewing my submission strategy to a higher number of “reach journals” from which I’d be more likely to get rejected, but I still always made sure to include many others that seemed in my ballpark.

Until this past week, where three journals accepted seven poems.

It’s important to recognize that what happened this week didn’t start this week. Two of the journals that accepted my work were places I’d published before, and though I don’t know either of these editors personally, I was touched that they each went out of their way to personally solicit a submission from me. There’s little more gratifying to get an email out of the blue that says, Hey Dina, we haven’t heard from you in a while. Our next theme is __________ and we would love you to submit your work. I’m paraphrasing the wording, but it’s the implication, rather than the words, that matters. Your work touched me. It was memorable and I’d like to see more of it. And share it with others.

Wow! Do I really have a fan base? Part of me feels uncomfortable even thinking such a thought. I tend to bristle in spaces where writers and other creatives get too blatantly self-promotional. I know there’s a certain amount of PR that has to be done, but I can usually discern when people are a little too connected to their egos, rather than seeing themselves as merely a conduit for the work they’re doing. I know that is a highly judgmental statement, and I’ll probably need to unpack it–and apologize to anyone I might have offended. But I will continue to stand firmly in an aura of humility, rather than arrogance, though hopefully maintaining enough balance not to fall into self-effacement, as one Jewish spiritual practice, the Mussar, teaches.

And taking that significant step away from self-effacement, I’m glad to take this moment to affirm that it’s ok–more than ok–to acknowledge that somewhere there are people out there who love my work.

Retrieved from Open Access: grfpublishers.org

Which is why I do all these submissions. And write this blog. Because I want to expand my reach beyond the boundaries of my communities to others in the ether, whom I hope will be touched in some small or large way by my words and the messages behind them. Ultimately, what I want is connection, whether it’s through my words or (in the cases of writers/artists/musicians, etc. of whom I’d call myself “a fan”) theirs.

Note: this is not a quick process. It has taken years, and many, many rejections and disappointments to cultivate these relationships. Likely there are editors out there who will love your work once they become aware of it, but the amount of time this takes will try your patience and fortitude. However, it is a great way to feel connected–and to get your words out there to a wider audience. It’s also been personally gratifying to friend some of these editors on social media and get to know just a little bit about them as people, as well as to follow journals I like and get a deeper sense of why these editors have devoted so much time to the unpaid labor of love of spreading words into the universe.

So thanks to Katherine McDaniel at Synkroniciti, Michael Broder at Second Coming, Abby Murray at Collateral, Elizabeth MacDuffie at Meat for Tea, Nadia Arrioli at Thimble, Emily Perkovich at Querencia Press, Matthew Krajniak at Consequence, Hayley Haugen at Sheila-Na-Gig, Lee Desrosiers at  Wordpeace and the Naugutuck River Review, Sally Zaino at Earthshine, and many others that I’m missing here for your dedication to forging connections between writers–and readers.

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Submissions Game Stats for 2025

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Still reeling from the news cycle, but the advice I took away from my trusty meditation app today was to soften into acceptance/resistance, rather than tensing up and making myself crazy, or giving up and crumbling away into some useless ball of powdery nothing.

So, returning to “my little life” with hopes that some of this will inspire others who are also playing (or thinking about playing) “The Submissions Game”–and it really does help to think of it as a game unless you are someone who can’t stand losing, here are my stats for 2025.

In poetry, my biggest focus, 17 journals accepted 28 poems. Of these, 13 of the journals were new to me, and 4 I’d been published in before. Of the poems, 4 were accepted on the first try, 8 had been rejected less than 5 times, 7 less than 10 times, 7 others had been rejected less than 15 times, and 2 were rejected less than 20 times (I generally stop submitting a poem when it hits 20 rejections.)

As for poetry rejections, the grand number was 83, with 25 submissions from 2025 still outstanding.

Short stories and essays, as usual, were less successful, with one acceptance (of a story that had previously been rejected 12 times.) I could also count two of the poems accepted as “flash fiction,” as they were prose poems that bordered on both genres.

Two other stories were rejected 14 times combined, and the essays I submitted were rejected 9 times.

I did get 2 “send more” or “made final round” notes with my fiction/essay submissions. Three essay/fiction submissions from 2025 are still outstanding.

Bigger projects also made little headway. A chapbook I’ve been circulating got 7 rejections. (And 3 more in the first week of 2026). One submission from 2025 is still outstanding.

I didn’t spend too much energy submitting my piano memoir this year, as most of the time I fretted over conflicting advice on how to revamp it into more of a self-help book. Two revisions later, at the end of December, it became clear to me that the new format wasn’t working so I went back to the original version and sent that to seven small press just before New Year’s Day. So far I’ve only heard back from one: a rejection.

I also haven’t done too much with the eleven novels in the drawer, but I did send one of them to three agents. One ghosted me, one answered with a scam offer, and one was nice enough to write an actual letter of rejection. It’s still out at one small press.

So, my grand total of overall rejections for 2025 was 134–well surpassing my goal of 100!

And I’m hitting the ground at a good rate for 2026, with 6 rejections in the first two weeks–that’s like a rejection almost every other day! But two nice things, as well: an acceptance of a poem from a new journal, and notification from a journal that I was accepted in last year that my poem had won one of their prizes, which comes with a cash award and a Pushcart Prize nomination.

 

https://pngimg.com/image/54797

As I’ve said before, while I’m compelled to keep getting my work out there–mostly so more people will read it than for any uncontrollable need for outside validation–I find I can soften into thinking of this as nothing more than a game I play with myself. So, if you’re interested in offering your work (and totally fine, if you’re not) I encourage you not to take the process too seriously, and certainly not as a judgment on the quality of your writing.

Now onto doing my part to change the world. If only I could approach that with the same softness and ease! Of course, the stakes are much higher!

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Best Rejection Letter, Ever!

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Nicolás Espinosa, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Recently I ran into an old acquaintance I knew through writing many years ago. She told me that she’d submitted a few essays to a few places and when they got rejected she gave up. It’s such a familiar story. I probably hear a similar version of it from someone nearly every month or two. But while I can’t counteract the argument that submitting work is a drain on time that might be more enjoyably spent on other things, I urge folks to expand their view of what it means to be rejected.

This week, I got the following letter from ONLY POEMS, a magazine with a 1.61% acceptance rate.

Thank you so much for trusting us with your wonderful poem. Although we‘re passing on this submission, I wanted to let you know that we received almost 600 poems for the Poem of the Month and your poem was in my Top 30.

I know “Meditating in a Heat Wave” will find a wonderful home soon, and I welcome you to share it when it does. I’d love to see it published, and also consider sharing it on our socials.

I sincerely hope you’ll try us again for our next Poem of the Month call.We will open again with a new themed call feature soon. Keep an eye out for that!

I’d also like to invite you to submit for our Poet of the Week series.  We’re also forever open for our new features: short poems, ekphrastic, and poets howl. Learn about them through our Submittable page/website/Substack.

Wow!

Out of 600 poems, mine was in the top 30! That’s pretty darn good. Problem is, for this particular call, they were going to only publish one poem. We need to stop thinking zero-sum game here, and get out of the “sports team metaphor” that if you don’t win the championship, you’ve failed. What’s even more important than my “ranking” is that my work touched these editors to the point of saying that if the poem eventually gets published in another journal, they would consider sharing it on their social media sites, extending legitimacy to my work through their good name, and enhancing its reach through their 37.8K followers on Instagram.

Of course, I’m now psyched to submit to ONLY POEMS again, but whether or not they ever publish my work, I’ll be forever grateful to their generosity in taking the time to write this letter, rebunking the insidious inner critic who lives in all of us and delights in promoting the falsehood that rejection means we are bad writers, bad people, worthless, useless, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So while the submission game may not be for everyone, I’m determined to keep playing it. The odds may be about the same, but it’s a lot cheaper than going to a casino, and the “prizes”–even when they’re rejection letters, are a lot longer lasting than whatever money might come tumbling out of a slot machine.

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Confidence

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Despite coming down with COVID a few days afterwards, my time at AWP, the big writing conference put on every year by Associated Writing Programs, greatly surpassed my expectations. This was huge, because my introvert interior had been raising a fair amount of ruckus trying to convince me not to go.

How did I get beyond my general dislike of intensive networking and chatting up strangers and vague acquaintances? I think Julie Andrews said it best–Confidence. (My 2 &1/2-year-old grandchild is obsessed with Do-Re-Mi, so I’ve been watching a lot of Julie Andrews, lately.)

I only went to AWP once before, ten years ago, when I was a student in an MFA program and at a low point in my writing life. As an older student who wasn’t into going out drinking every night after residency activities, I didn’t establish the strong connections that many of my classmates had. And I’d already achieved the goal held by so many–of publishing a novel (two, actually) with major publishers. The problem was I couldn’t seem to publish anything else because my books hadn’t met company sales expectations, even though both won awards and one went into six printings.

So I’d been floundering for a few years before I decided to take the plunge into an MFA program. Even then, the decision spurred more from the love of learning than with strong expectations of getting my writing life back on track. I certainly learned a bunch, but while the approach to learning writing through close analytical study and imitation of “successful” writers helped me polish many elements of craft, I felt like I was losing the connection to my own voice that I’d honed over the years with a more generative and positively focused approach.

And as my voice floundered and rejections continued to pour in, I lost my confidence.

What I remember about being at that AWP ten years ago was feeling that I didn’t belong. The journals and presses there were part of the MFA world, a world in which I didn’t feel included. So I didn’t talk to many of the people behind the tables. I walked the floor silently, feeling maybe a bit too sorry for myself. But when someone’s in the thick of writer depression, it’s hard to claw your way out.

So, what changed?

(1) Community: While I didn’t find a strong community in the MFA program, I did realize how important community was. It again took some arm-wrestling with the introvert, but shortly after I graduated, I started expanding my writing community. Forcing myself to go to a monthly reading put on by a local writers association led to an invitation to join a poetry critique group, which brought me a whole new circle of dear and trusted friends. And when the pandemic hit, joining on-line generative writing communities anchored near and far helped address the profound isolation of that time, even if it seemed strange to feel so connected to people I’d only seen in a box on my computer screen.

And one thrill from this past AWP was to meet two of these people for the first time: Sage and Carla in real life.

(2) Persistence: Somehow I got back in the submission saddle. Big time. With a goal of getting 100 rejections every year. And with these rejections came acceptances. And many of the journals who accepted my work were at this year’s AWP.  So I could go up to them and say, “Hi, you published a poem of mine in your journal. Thank you!” Hint: if you do this, it helps to have the name of the poem and the year it was published. And then, take a picture, as I did with Brian, who published my poem Horses in the Gully in his first edition of Tofu Ink, and bought my poetry book, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling.

In fact, it was my poetry book’s publisher Querencia’s participation at AWP that provided the final reason to draw me there, and I loved being part of an offsite reading they organized with Alternative Milk, fifth wheel press and many worl(d)s.place.  But having community and a publishing track record kept my sulky introvert at bay as I walked the tables of the trade show floor. This time, I browsed journals and small press titles, asking editors what kinds of work they were looking for. My conversations affirmed that these editors were real people, with their own tastes, judgments, prejudices that were no more or less valid than mine. And while I didn’t do a Julie Andrews hop-skip or wave a guitar around, I felt confidence–not that I would necessarily be published by these journals, but that my work was valid and belonged in their reading queue. And more importantly, that I belonged.

 

Submission Milestones for 2024

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Each year since I’ve started this blog, I’ve included an end-of-year submission stats post, just to shed some light on the nitty-gritty of this murky game. Here’s what happened for me in 2024.

POETRY:

20 Journals/Anthologies accepted 34 poems. I also got 91 poetry rejections.

Of the 34 poems accepted, 7 were taken on the very first go-round; 8 poems were previously rejected 1-3 times; 7 poems were rejected 4-7 times; 4 were rejected 9-12 times; 3 were rejected 15-20 times, and 1 had been previously rejected 31 times! (The other 4 poems were previously published, so I didn’t track that stat.) This surprised me, as usually my poems circulate more before someone picks them up. I’m wondering if I might be getting better at selecting poems I send out and matching them to journals.

Another thing of note is that of the 20 journals that accepted my work, 8 of them had previously published something of mine in the past, so I may have been more of a known quantity. But this is a great point for anyone playing the submission game. Establishing relationships with journals and editors who like your work can be extremely gratifying and also help soften the rejections from some of the more competitive journals on your reach list. And as long as the journals you’re published in put out a good quality product, who cares that they’re not the creme de la creme in the journal world. Your work is still getting read and appreciated!

FICTION AND CREATIVE NON-FICTION:

My fiction stats are a bit more depressing. I offered stories and essays to 23 journals, and only 1 got accepted: an op-ed in my local newspaper.

Some analysis on this:

–Stories and essays are often harder to publish because they take up more room in a publication. (5-10 pages vs. a 1-2 page poem).

–Most of my better stories were already published in my collection, IMMIGRANTS, so I’ve been only circulating a few newer ones. Before the book was published I did manage to publish around half of the stories it contained in various places, but it was slow going.

–I still tend to feel overall more confident in my fiction, and therefore I submitted  to a greater number of “reach journals.”

AWARDS:

I’m personally very mixed on the “awards/contest” game for books because it seems like mostly a way of collecting a lot of exorbitant entry fees just to say your book won an award, but my publisher and I did submit to a couple of the more known ones. I was pleased to get a finalist designation (first runner up short-story and all category short-list) for the Eric Hoffer Awards, and a finalist designation in the short story category for the Independent Authors Network.

I also received two Pushcart Prize and two Best-of-the-Net nominations from various journal editors.

And I did not win a few other notable things, like an IPPY Award.

LARGER PROJECTS:

It was a thrill to have my poetry book, Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, which drew heavily on my witnessing trips to the border and the children’s detention center in Homestead, FL, come out in early 2024. With the upcoming administration’s about to take over and put their extreme deportation plans in gear, this book feels even more relevant right now, and I’m continuing to look for ways to publicize it.

I did not spend a lot of time circulating my music memoir or any of my novels. But I did receive three rejections (aka non-responses) from agents, and one non-response from a small press where I sent one of my older kid-lit novels.) So this might be an area ripe for New Year’s resolutions in 2025.

Nevertheless, I easily crossed the 100-rejection threshold (91 poetry rejections, 22 fiction/CNF rejections, and 4 agent/small press rejections) for a grand total of 117!

Onward to 2025!

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Revisiting “Finished” Work

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Yesterday, as an offering to alums of my MFA program, I had the opportunity to meet with a literary agent to talk about my piano memoir, Imperfect Pitch. I’d sent her some materials in advance–an overview/summary and some sample chapters, but I had no expectation that she would open the conversation by telling me she’d fallen in love with the book and was happily going to take it. Those pipe-dreaming days are long over, and the book has already been rejected by more than 30 agents. The few who took time to actually write back (rather than simply ghost me) all said the same thing. The issue wasn’t the writing–which was strong. The issue was the marketability.

So, not wanting to waste my precious 15 minutes searching for compliments or reassurance, I dived right in. What could I do to make this book more marketable?

Apparently–though not surprisingly–it’s extremely difficult to publish a memoir with a major publisher unless you are already a celebrity. Of course, more people would rather read about Taylor Swift than about me. I know this. The only reason I’ve been trying the “big-time channels” with this book is that I believe its underlying message will inspire and help people who’ve lost their creative north star, as I did in my music life, succumbing to the pressure of perfectionism and performance and losing all joy in the creative process. So I’d like the book to get greater circulation than it would from a smaller press.

“You need to position this more as a self-help book,” the agent told me. “Have more about the overall arc in the first chapter about what the reader will find out, and make it clear to readers that the ultimate payback will be getting permission to go back to something they cared about. Also include some instructions—make them broad, so they can apply to other arts.”

What? Give away the arc in the first chapter? My fiction-writer self is quaking at that comment, which goes against everything I’ve learned–both in my MFA program and way before. It’s hard enough to develop the darn arc. Why would anyone read a book if they already know what’s going to happen?

“In non-fiction, the journey is in the destination,” the agent said. She also suggested not being afraid of name-dropping if I knew anyone in the writing world that I could say would help promote the book. Ha! I know many people in the writing world, but most of them, like me, are not household names. In the music world, though, I do have only a couple of degrees of separation from Yo Yo Ma. I wrote about the time he guest-coached my younger child’s chamber group in the book–but likely he has better things to do, like call attention to repressive immigration policies by playing cello on the U.S./Mexico border.

Oh well, I’ll tackle that issue later. First, I’ll have to think about the reframing. I’ll keep the current version, just in case, but in general, I like revision, which I think of as re-visiting, rather than correcting something that was previously wrong. I’ve recently discovered that in my piano life, as I re-visit pieces I struggled so hard with four years ago, like Beethoven’s Pathetique, I have a lot more facility in bringing them back. Frequent practicing has made my fingers stronger and more flexible, and I can focus less on the notes and more on the shadings of a piece, how I want to express it, which gets to the soul of the creative process–especially as I’ve learned to let go of the expectation that I’ll play every note and every rhythm perfectly and without bumps.

I think this is also true for writing. As I’m working on several projects at once, I’ve become even more aware of the difference in my writing confidence and fluidity between slogging through a first draft of a new novel, and revising a poem or prose piece where I already “know the notes.”

So I’m willing to dive in and try. Maybe this rewrite will feel too loud and brash, or predictable, but maybe I can strike just the right balance between memoir and self-help to please both the publishing gods and my own creative vision–and feel jazzed by the discovery of what my fingers and brain can do.

Here’s pianist Daniel Barenboim playing the Pathetique. Enjoy!

 

TAKING STOCK OF 2023

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As the year draws to a close, here’s what I’ve done in the publication/submission universe:

POETRY:

  • 86 rejections
  • 18 journals accepted 22 poems (Including one poem in Rattle!)
  • 1 chapbook accepted–Very excited about Here in Sanctuary–Whirling, which is forthcoming from Querencia Press in 2024. This dedicated and spirited small press has been a dream to work with. Cover reveal is coming soon!
  • 2 Pushcart Prize Nominations: Thank you so much to Gyroscope Review and the River Heron Review for this recognition.
  • 20 submissions still pending

SHORT FICTION:

Since I knew Immigrants was coming out soon, I only sent out one short story that wasn’t in the collection. That story got 12 rejections, with 2 pending.

The more exciting news on this front was that Immigrants did come out just last month and has already gotten some lovely reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. (Of the 13 stories in this book, 8 have been previously published by other journals.)

For those of you playing the submission game, be aware that stories, especially those on the longer side are harder to publish than poems, especially for a print journal that has to deal with space considerations.

CREATIVE NON-FICTION:

Essays I sent out were rejected 11 times, with 6 submissions still pending. One of the rejections made it to a final round and one of the pending submissions is in the final round. Also in this category–2 guest columns submitted to and published by our local newspaper, The Daily Hampshire Gazette: Losing the Light and Let Them Wear Tutus.

LONGER WORK:

I queried 27 agents this year about my music memoir, Imperfect Pitch. Three agents sent actual rejection letters, 3 are still pending (sent within the last three months), and 21 ghosted me. Of those that ghosted, 2 of them first asked to see a proposal and then ghosted when I followed up.

I also sent the book to three small presses and received 2 rejections. One small press submission is still pending.

And finally, I did take another stab at submitting a novel I’d given up on when I found out that Delphinium was considering unagented queries. The editor asked to see the whole book, and rejected it a month later with a letter that began, “Deer Dina…”

All these rejections may sound depressing, but I’m really okay with them. I’m glad to have far exceeded my goal of getting 100 rejections, and as I’ve said to many fellow writers, I make a point of not letting any rejection bother me for more than 10 minutes.

Besides the successes are incredibly sweet, and I’m grateful (and, quite honestly, also terrified) any time some of my words make it past my computer into the big, wide world.

Onward to 2024. Happy New Year!