TAKING STOCK OF 2023

Posted on December 27, 2023 by dinafried

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!

Confessions of a Prompt Queen

Posted on October 16, 2023 by dinafried

I’m writing this post today in celebration of being featured today in Rattle Magazine’s tribute to prompt poems.

And while I’m not a fan of bragging, I can’t help being delighted to be published in such a reputable magazine that I like so much–makes it worth all the hours of submission/rejection drudgery.

One of my writing groups calls me The Submission Queen because I spend so much time trying to get my work out there and encouraging others to submit, as well. But I’d prefer to think of myself as The Prompt Queen. Truly, I don’t know where I would be in my writing life without prompts.

I’d written all through high school and in college (as an English major with a concentration in Creative Writing) and slogged my way through a couple of drafts of a novel, but I didn’t feel like I’d even begun to find my voice until my late 20s, when I took my first workshop with the late but immortal Pat Schneider of Amherst Writers & Artists. Choose an object, Pat would say as she’d lay out a bouquet of ordinary things on the coffee table: an egg beater, a hand-crocheted doily, a jar of French’s mustard, a hammer with nicks on the handle. And if you don’t know why you’re choosing it, that’s a good thing. Then write whatever this object inspires you to write.

There was something about the freedom granted, the atmosphere in the room to say anything (or nothing–no one ever had to share their writing) that unlocked a gate in me, and in nearly everyone that took part in this process, whether we wrote about childhood memories this object evoked or sauntered off on some surrealistic language adventure where the object had, at most, a cameo role.

Pat would usually follow up her object exercise with pictures, or lines from poems, or a collection of things to smell or touch, or a meditation to bring back a memory or dream scene. It didn’t really matter what she offered. Following the prompt bypassed my inner critic’s need to write something “good.” I could simply pick up my pen and play, and with that playfulness came surprising turns of language and metaphors and scenes from my subconscious I would have never conjured up with my mind on more active patrol. So, I’ve continued to seek prompts wherever I can find them: in writing groups, in online subscriptions, or in my own collections of poems and pictures.

This doesn’t mean that all prompts work for me or that whatever I write comes out perfect and polished. I still file away a lot of this writing in the dead zone in my computer marked “Inactive.” But often I’m able to take what I wrote in a prompt and wrestle it into a poem, or flash fiction piece, or develop it further into an essay or short-story. Occasionally I’ve used prompts to enhance scenes in my novels or longer creative non-fiction projects.

And whether what I write turns into something finished or not, I have fun! And I often get to vicariously release whatever useless stressful thoughts are gnawing at me in a creative and playful way. In these dark times, there’s a lot to be said for the value of playing.

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

So, if you choose to read it, I hope you enjoy my Rattle poem (while I enjoy my 15 minutes of fame). And here’s a link to the poem (prompt) that inspired it. And a picture of the moon, because that also could have been a prompt that inspired this poem.

And to jumpstart your own prompt process, I highly recommend Pat Schneider’s book, Writing Alone and With Others.

Stupid Rejection Letters

Posted on September 27, 2023 by dinafried

We’ve all heard the stories of famous writers who suffered through many rejections before getting published, like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling. Kate DiCamillo got 473 rejections before publishing her Newberry Award novel, Because of Winn Dixie. And one of the most telling rejection stories is about the man who retyped a National Book Award-winning Jerzy Kosinski novel and sent it under an unknown name to a bunch of major publishers, all of whom rejected it.

And since many agents and literary journals report their acceptance rate as around 1-5%, none of us should offer our work to the wider world unless we expect to get rejections. A lot of them. A common recommendation is to aim for 100 rejections each year.

If you send out that much work, the chances you may get a few acceptances are much higher. My batting average is around 10% acceptances for poems, less for other projects, but that’s because I submit to a range of publications. If I only submitted to prestigious journals, my acceptance rate would be much lower, though I do review journals and only submit to those I like. I didn’t track how many longer fiction queries and pitches were rejected before I had a novel accepted for publication–the fourth one I wrote. But I can say with confidence that it was well more than 100. I remember gawking at the acceptance letter when it came, thinking this can’t be real, and then hoping I wouldn’t die before the publication date, which was listed as two full years away.

Usually, rejection letters are neutral. Thank you for submitting, but this work doesn’t fit our needs at this time. Good luck placing it elsewhere. Sometimes, an editor will tell you that your work came close and invite you to submit again. This is considered an encouraging rejection and should not be lamented, but celebrated.

I make a point not to let a rejection bother me for more than five minutes. Nonetheless, I was a bit ticked off last year when I got the following letter in response to an anthology looking for published and unpublished “cool short stories.”

Thanks for submitting ‘Will This Be the Last Time.’ We appreciated the premise of a couple who tries to escape the U.S. to Canada, but we’re not sure this story fully committed that premise; in fact, as this story’s plot points unfolded, we weren’t quite sure what this story’s premise was. (To us, it felt a bit more like autobiographical fiction than it did like a well-plotted, tense, suspenseful short story–which is what we’ve promised our readers our selections will be.)

I’m sure these editors are patting themselves on the back for taking the time to offer feedback. And feedback can be useful in knowing how our work is hitting people—or isn’t. But if the goal for giving feedback is to help the writer improve, what could I possibly do with this comment? If a reader thinks the story’s premise is faulty, which is totally fair game, then they should take the time to say where they think it veered off course and what scenes or plot points made the premise confusing to them. Then as a writer, I can ponder those scenes with that feedback in mind and think about possible changes. And if that’s too much work for a submission editor, it’s fine to say the story doesn’t meet their needs.

And the last sentence! I take issue with the implication that autobiographical fiction is inherently bad, even though the only autobiographical elements in this story related to the fear I felt during the Trump years rather than any actual truth in my life.

And instead of saying something reader-centered at the end, like “Good luck placing this elsewhere,” this anthology ended its letter by asking me to follow them on Twitter because they need more followers.

A truly reader-centered rejection letter will often add the extra-nice element, saying, I know these decisions are subjective. Which they are. This story had already been accepted and published–amazingly by the first journal I sent it to, and it’s included in my upcoming collection, Immigrants.

What ticks me off the most is that this is the kind of letter that will send many rejection-sensitive people burrowing back into their dens, when they have so much beautiful writing that the world would be better for reading. So that’s why I’m highlighting this rejection, which, I admit, did annoy me for more than my allotted five minutes, and still rankles months later. Caveat scriptor—writer beware. If you get a letter like this, ignore it and keep writing—and submitting. In fact, add five extra rejections to your goal for the year. That’s I’m going to do.

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Taking Stock of 2022–Part II: Submissions

Quote

Posted on January 4, 2023 by dinafried

“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.