Let's Talk about Rejection

Rejection as Opportunity: Discussion and a Prompt

When you’re a writer, rejection is inevitable and can take many forms.* But despite its negative connotation, rejection doesn’t have to be viewed negatively. Instead, I like to think of rejection as an invitation, an opportunity.

*Note: For this post, I’m specifically referring to rejections from literary journals. But any negative feedback on a piece of writing could realistically be construed as “rejection.” Rejection doesn’t have to be “formal.”

17 Rejections and Counting…

I’m proud to say that since January—in just three months—I’ve received 17 rejections and three acceptances from literary journals.

And, no, I’m not being flippant. I’m sincerely quite proud of all those rejections, several of which have been positive (always encouraging!).

Rejections, as I see it, are a sign of progress. (A couple of years ago, I wrote a blog post about this topic as well.)  

One of my goals as a creative writer is to get my work published; another goal is to keep improving as a writer. In line with those goals, the more work I get published, the pickier I tend to be in regards to where I’m submitting. The more challenging the journal, the better my writing needs to be; and that’s exactly what I’m working toward.

I enjoy the challenge of submitting because I believe it does, indeed, make me a better writer. I read stories in the journals I admire and think, I want to write like that! And when I read others’ work, I come away with ideas of how to improve my own writing.

Rinse and Repeat

I started submitting work in earnest in 2020, thanks to the pandemic. Secluded, more or less, in my home, I focused on my writing. I suddenly had the time to put into practice all I’d been absorbing about writing in the preceding years.

I developed a routine: Write, revise, submit.

Rinse and repeat.

By writing, revising, and submitting regularly, I improved as a writer; I have no doubt about that. Throughout 2021, I regularly had about 14 stories out for submission at any one time. As rejections poured in (as expected), I’d revise and submit somewhere else. I generally received at least one or two rejections a week, give or take, but I also had 12 stories published in 2021.

I was ecstatic the first time I had a piece accepted by one of my “goal journals,” not just because it was one of my goal journals but also because it was evidence that my hard work was paying off. And submitting is hard work (as is writing, of course).

Rejections Are to Be Celebrated

I was in high school when I received my first rejection from a lit journal. This was back when you sent submissions via snail mail, always including an SASE with your submission in order to get a response. The editor returned my story with a form-letter rejection and this handwritten note: “Edit, edit, edit!” Did he know I was just a 16-year-old kid who’d never taken a creative writing class in her life, who didn’t have the first clue about the craft of writing? (Probably.)

Around the time of that rejection, a time when I was reading and writing voraciously and also had my first subscription to Writer’s Digest (or something similar), I remember reading that writers should be able to wallpaper their walls with rejection slips—the more, the better! The inference was clear: Rejections were to celebrated!

So, I understood early on—long before I ever studied creative writing formally, long before there were online journals, and long before Duotrope—that I would receive many more rejections than acceptances. This was to be expected. This was what creative writing was about.

Rejection as Opportunity

While we might feel momentarily discouraged by a rejection, the fact is that there is nothing to lose by submitting work, only something to gain. The more we submit, the more chance there is that our work will be accepted somewhere.

And the more rejections we get, the more opportunities we have to create a better story.

After I receive a rejection, I might brood for a minute (sometimes longer), but then I redirect my energy and record the rejection on my submission tracker. (I’m not particularly sophisticated in my tracking. I use a Word document and color coding, and it works very well for me.)

Revisit, Revise, Re-envision

The key, to me, though, is what comes next: revisiting the piece and revising—re-envisioning—it.

There are times when I set a piece aside indefinitely after a rejection; typically, though, if it’s a piece I’m excited about, I will wait a few days and then pull it up and see what I think. Often when I reread it after having had time away from it, it’s obvious to me why it was rejected. Revising at this point may involve merely tweaking word choice or it may encompass something much more substantial.

Once I’m satisfied with my revision, I research journals and get ready to submit again. Sometimes this researching of journals is the most tedious part, especially if I have a story that’s had multiple rejections. Where do I submit to now? But this is also why it’s important to read the kind of stuff you want to publish, e.g., flash fiction, and the journals you want to publish in. I always check out where other flash writers have been published, adding possible journals to my “favorites” list on Duotrope. And new journals are appearing all the time.

Write, revise, submit. Rinse and repeat. Photo credit: Rebecca Trumbull Photography.

Find the Right Fit

One of the books that most influenced me as a writer was Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, winner of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. This novel showed me the utter flexibility of fiction, the infinite possibilities of what writing can be. I also happened to read it at a pivotal time in my creative writing education, as I was entering the final year of my MFA program.

This novel jumpstarted my creative juices, and even before I had finished reading it, I felt its influence and started making notes to myself regarding a story I’d been struggling with: “Whiskey Burns Faster.” Thanks to McBride’s novel, I had a breakthrough with my story, resulting in its eventual publication.

The book cover of McBride’s novel notes that she “spent just under a decade trying to get it published.” I have no idea what that process looked like for McBride, but I can infer that it probably involved lots of rejection. Yet the book won an award and was praised by The New York Times.

Some stories just need more percolating than others. Sometimes it’s the story itself, but sometimes it’s finding the right fit, e.g., the right journal, the right publisher.

So how does one find the right fit? There’s definitely a learning curve. I’m not always the best gauge of this, but I’ve gotten better at it.

I find Duotrope to be an invaluable resource when trying to figure out where to submit. On Duotrope, I look at acceptance rates, response times, the journal description, and editor interviews if available. From just these things, I can often decide whether I want to submit to that journal or not. If it sounds like a good match for the story at hand, I then go to the journal’s website and poke around, getting a feel for who will be reading my work and what kind of work they’re looking for. Researching where to submit can be a lengthy process. (And don’t forget: Always read (and follow!) a journal’s submission guidelines thoroughly!)

Opportunities Abound!

If you’re new to submitting to literary journals, a word to the wise: Don’t take rejections personally. It may be that your story still needs work, but it also may be that your story isn’t a good fit for a particular journal. It may, of course, be both.

Writing (and submitting) is about learning, and learning is a process that’s never-ending. But here’s the takeaway:

The more you submit, the more chance you have to get published.

The more rejections you accrue, the more opportunities you also accrue.

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Prompt: Revisit and Re-envision

Revisit a story that’s been rejected from a journal, particularly a story that you’re not completely satisfied with. Use the rejection as an opportunity. Challenge yourself. Re-envision this story by cutting the story’s word count in half. (E.g., if it’s a 2000-word story, aim for a story of 1000 words.) To cut a story in half, you need to think very deliberately about the story.

“It’s perhaps the most challenging thing for a writer to do, but the ability to remove things so that their removal creates a better story ‘divides those who can write from those who can really write,’ said David Mamet” [as quoted in The Art of Brevity by Grant Faulkner].

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Pro Tip: If you don’t already do this when you revise, retype; don’t copy and paste, and don’t work off the existing draft. Work off a blank page so that you’re not encumbered by the existing prose.