Ep 99: Submissions To Get a Yes, You Risk a No
You\u2019ve written something, edited it, polished it, and decided to send it out. Depending on your project, you\u2019ll be shipping it off to a literary journal, magazine, agent, or publishing house. When you do, you risk rejection.\n\nYou\u2019ve probably heard about Stephen King\u2019s rejections from his book On Writing. He says, \u201cBy the time I was fourteen...the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it\u201d (29).\nYou Must Risk a No to Get a Yes\nRejection is part of the process of writing and submitting our work.\n\nNicole Rollender says she\u2019s gotten to know several poets through social media, and when she congratulated one of these writers on her full-length acceptance, the poet told Rollender "it had taken her five years and 80 rejections to get her acceptance.\u201d Most people aren\u2019t posting about their rejections, Rollender observes, so this story can remind us that "behind every acceptance are a lot of rejections."\nLacerations of the Soul\nBut I won\u2019t lie to you\u2014rejections hurt. I\u2019ve heard \u201cNo,\u201d and it stings. Rejections mess with your mind. They awaken the voices that taunt us, questioning our right to write.\n\nWhen you get that first response back, and it\u2019s a rejection\u2026you\u2019ll have to fight the temptation to draw an extreme conclusion. Some new writers and sensitive writers feel that sting and think, \u201cWhy did I ever think I could write?\u201d\n\nIsaac Asimov expresses the pain a rejection delivers this way: \u201cRejections slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil \u2013 but there is no way around them.\u201d\n\n\n\nSylvia Plath offers an alternative view. She wrote, \u201cI love my rejection slips. They show me I try.\u201d\nTry\nIf you want to get published, try. And keep trying. Keep writing and sending out your work. And when you get a rejection slip, tell yourself this:\n\n\u201cOne editor at one publication doesn\u2019t want this one piece on this one day.\u201d\n\nThat\u2019s all it means.\n\nBelieve that. Then you can walk through a rejection ritual, which we\u2019ll talk about in more detail next time.\n\nAfter that, the next step will be a little different depending on whether you're working on a book proposal, a magazine article pitch, or an essay for literary journals. If you\u2019re an essayist, you could revisit your piece and see if it needs revising\u2014maybe have someone else take a look at it, too. Make any changes you deem necessary, then send it out to the next journal on your list.\nDon\u2019t Let Rejections Take You by Surprise\nWhen you know in advance that you will receive rejections, you can deal with them a least a little more rationally. Knowledge of the inevitable won\u2019t make the rejections any easier, but at least they won\u2019t take you by surprise.\n\nThe only way to avoid rejection completely is to stuff your work in a drawer or let it languish in a digital file, and never, ever send it out.\n\nOr you could get in the game. You could start sending out your work and learn and grow. You\u2019ll get more experienced writing cover letters and researching literary journals or magazines.\n\nRollender pointed out that \u201c[i]f a journal receives 1,500 submissions of five poems a year, and they have 80 poem slots in their four annual issues, that\u2019s 80 out of 7,500 poems. So a rejection\u201d she says, "isn\u2019t a referendum on your work.\u201d Again, it simply means that one editor at one publication doesn\u2019t want this one piece on this one day.\nIncrease Your Rate of Submission\nAn article in the September 2016 issue of The Writer magazine presented stats on the rate of acceptance based on number of submissions to literary journals. Author Keysha Whitaker tracked her submissions and at the time she started calculating, she was getting submissions at a rate of 10 percent.\n\nShe started asking other writers their rates, and most of them had never calculated it. The first woman she asked had a 9 percent rate. Another person came in at 4.9 percent,