100 Rejections: Pain or Gain?

I keep the guidelines of journals I'm interested in
on my desk. That way they're right in my face
and I can't avoid them.

It’s the start of a new year, and I’ve just crossed the finish line of a marathon I began last January, a strange, windmill-tilting quest to collect 100 rejections of my writing in one year. Yep, that’s right—I sent my work out to a lot of publishers during the past year, hoping that 100 of them would reject it in 2019.

The idea of boosting your submission process by trying for 100 rejections was championed back in 2016 by writer Kim Liao in her now-famous article “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year.” It’s great reading, and it got a lot of writers talking about Liao’s philosophy, which was inspired by a friend’s advice to her: “Collect rejections. Set rejection goals. I know someone who shoots for one hundred rejections in a year, because if you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too.”

I like this approach, and although I’d never really counted rejections, I knew that in past years I got way fewer than 100 per year; probably more like 20 or 30. So this past year I decided to participate in an online group where everyone was trying to get 100 rejections in 2019. (I like to do these things with groups because without any accountability or encouragement, I know I'll probably blow it off after a couple of weeks.)


The count & the amount
How did it go? In short, I didn’t make it to 100 rejections. I got 52, so I basically ran a half-100 marathon. And to get those 52 rejections, I sent out a lot more submissions than I normally would in one year. So my first takeaway is: It’s really hard work sending out enough submissions for 100 to bounce back.

My second takeaway was that it was fascinating to actually keep track of how many submissions I sent out (71*), how many were rejected (52), and how many were accepted (19). That meant a 27% acceptance rate, or roughly 1 out of every 4 submissions, and it held steady pretty much throughout the year. That 27% stat makes me happy. I’d never done enough analysis to figure out my acceptance rate in past years—I was afraid to, to be honest, fearing the percentage would be so depressing that I’d hang up my notebooks and never write again. But 1 in 4? I can live with that.

I kept a simple ongoing list of rejections and acceptances in my Notes app so I could jot them down anytime I got an e-mail with a yes or a no (and even at that, I may have missed one or two; I track submissions with an index card system that I love but that isn’t stat-friendly). By my calculations, I made $970** from writing in 2019, most of it from a second-place win in a national contest and reprints of a couple of articles that I wasn’t expecting and that I counted as a win. I didn’t keep track of how much I paid in contest entries and reading fees, but I'm cheap about those so I figure they came to about $100.


The reckoning
Because I’ve never kept meticulous stats on acceptances and rejections in the past, I can’t say how many more of either I got in 2019. But at a glance back through my 2018 submissions, it looks like I got more than twice as many acceptances in 2019. So based on that alone, this is a good system. I got into a few journals I didn't think I had much chance at; I was in "why not?" mode a lot this year, and that's a good way to be. And although, as I said, I worked a lot to send out all of those submissions, I never felt exhausted or defeated by the project. It was fun; it was a game. I’m a sucker for games.

However, I can’t help thinking that the whole process made me very eager to be published, perhaps more than was healthy. Like many writers, I was often told early on that writers should write more and publish less. (Somebody famous said that; I forget who.) Parts of me are at war over this. That publish-less thing is sort of a puritanical philosophy, like we all need to suffer to be worthy, and I know there are times when I rush off poems and essays for publication before they’re ready. (I can only hope they get rejected.) I also know that I’m 57 years old and don’t have the luxury of time that I felt in my 20s or 30s. And I sort of feel like, if I can’t rush to publication when I’m pushing 60, when exactly do I get to that? And I laugh, because writing is all about joy and not about rules. And I know I need to just keep writing and send out what I like.

On to 100?
I guess this was a success, since I’m already planning how to get more rejections in 2020***. But as always, I was surprised during this year of rejections by the way some of them broke my heart and others rolled right off me. In general, the 100-rejections practice helped take the sting out of them; when collecting them was a goal, it changed my feelings about them a little. ("Rejection? Great! Put it on the list!") That said, it didn’t mean I enjoyed getting rejecting any more than usual. This system is not a magic antidote; it’s more like desensitization. But, as I always tell young writers when I do presentations for them, this kind of desensitization is your friend. If you’re the kind who wants to rip up every rejection letter and mail it back to the editor in a Sharpie-scrawled envelope, you’re going to get very tired of doing that when they’re coming in at this rate. You log them in and move on and send out more, and that’s what takes up a lot of time in a writer's daily life.

Which brings up the question: When do you have time to write when you’re beating your brains out sending out all those submissions? I didn’t actually find that to be a problem; I continued my usual practice of doing two month-long writing marathons in April and August, and I sent out fewer submissions during those months because I was concentrating on a lot of writing. Through the rest of the year, I wrote about the same number of poems as usual, as well as some essays. So I guess the answer is that the writing still takes first priority; the submitting time, for me, ended up pushing something else out of the way, like Netflix or yard work. Which reminds me, please steer clear of my yard. While I was sending out submissions, I think skunks moved in there.












* I tracked submissions, not individual poems or pieces of writing. And note that the “submissions sent out” is just the sum of acceptances and rejections received during 2019; some were submitted in 2018, and I think a couple of publishers sat on them longer than that.

** I love it when writers tell you how much they make, don't you? The great taboo. This figure only tracks journal payments and contest wins, not book sales or honoraria at readings.

*** I'll try to be more methodical, like make lists of journals I want to be in and then actually go down the list and send poems to them. So far, I've been very good about making the lists. Not so good about the sending part.

4 Things Writers Love about Downton Abbey

It’s more popular than religion, it clogs up Facebook every Sunday night, and it’s an out-of-the-park homer for PBS. I know—what’s not to love about Downton Abbey? But there’s more to this show than scheming footmen, Maggie Smith’s one-liners, and “Bates is hot.” For writers, the show is a special pleasure because it hits on so many issues that authors grapple with all the time.

1) It’s a lesson in potboiler writing.

Like many bestselling authors, Downton creator Julian Fellowes keeps viewers engaged by employing two simple strategies that any fiction writer can use: delayed gratification and sudden setbacks.

       Delayed gratification sometimes plays out over entire seasons, with a desired result—Bates being cleared of the murder charge, or Matthew warming up to Mary—getting pushed farther and farther away as the complications mount and hopes are dashed. But Fellowes also uses this trick in miniature, teasing delayed gratification out of the smaller moments. Remember when Mary was trying to figure out whether someone in the house had mailed a crucial letter that would save the estate from ruin? She went to the servants’ dining room to ask the staff if anyone posted the letter, and no one had. She turned away, deflated, and the viewer’s hopes were thwarted too—what would happen to Downton now? But then Daisy, the kitchen maid, came into the room and asked what was going on—and it turned out she posted the letter, and all was saved. OK, it was manipulative, but notice that Fellowes didn’t give us an easy win even in this small scene; a delay of a minute or two stretches out the drama that much more and keeps us watching.*

       Then there’s the other side of the coin: While he’s delaying our gratification, Fellowes litters the show with unexpected setbacks and tragedies. Brides are jilted; people get sick and die. And while that kind of continual jarring would make most of us crazy in real life, in a story, it’s a surprise—and fun, in a roller-coaster sort of way**. It makes us wonder what’s around the next corner, and the next, and we keep watching to see what disaster will happen this time. So while Fellowes pulls us along on the rope of delayed gratification, he smacks us silly with sudden tragedy. And we like it, because it’s good storytelling.

2) It’s bubbliciously soapy.

Most Downton fans will guiltily admit that part of its attraction is that it’s a big soap opera—a serial about love and betrayal among a large cast of characters. So were Dallas and Dynasty (a friend used to call them Dallasty); so were ER and NYPD Blue and even the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, in its way—and so are countless successful shows on the air now. There’s a reason why TV writers draw from that well again and again: The serial structure hooks viewers, and the machinations keep them watching. Fellowes has avoided some old soap clichés—so far, we haven’t had any babies switched at birth or lovers who turn out to be siblings, though this season I smell a dead-person-who’s-not-really-dead (the heir in India?). But he has trotted out a few chestnuts like amnesia (the soldier with the burned face), villains who do evil just because they’re spiteful (Thomas and O’Brien), ill-starred lovers who have to overcome outlandishly complicated obstacles (Mary and Matthew), and the old standby of rich people who keep their cognac in glass decanters and are constantly in danger of “losing everything” and being forced to flee to their spare mansion, the little one with only 10 bedrooms.

3) Julian Fellowes is a late bloomer.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Julian Fellowes. I first noticed him when he was an actor on the BBC series Monarch of the Glen in the early 2000s. He played Kilwillie, the mischievous blueblood neighbor, and got stuck doing a lot of slapstick scenes. But he always played that character with zeal and a deliciously snooty accent. And it turned out that at the same time, he was quietly nurturing his career as a writer, penning the screenplay for Gosford Park that later won him an Oscar. He also wrote two bestselling novels. And his dual careers of acting and writing really took wing when he was in his 50s—older than I am now. I love that.

4) It ain’t Big Rich England.

These days, we’re plagued with a bevy of “big rich” reality shows—I call them “fat-lip shows”—like Big Rich Texas and The Real Housewives of This City That Will Not Surprise You by Having Rich Housewives in It. These shows take us inside the mahogany walls of America’s zillionaires and show us that 1) they rarely work, 2) they bicker constantly, 3) they fuss a lot about their appearance, and 4) they take a long time to eat dinner. Of course, Downton Abbey is like that too, but it’s all concocted by a writer***, which somehow makes it more palatable. And, hallelujah, it gives that writer a really good job.

           

* The creators of the sci-fi show Eureka had a similar storytelling trick that they called “the big button”: The heroes slave away through the whole show on a machine that will stop some looming disaster, and in the last act, just as all hell is breaking loose, they finish the machine and push the magic button—and nothing happens. Or something happens that appears to save the world, but that causes another disaster, and they have to solve that. By the end, the viewer is spent and satisfied from all the tension and release (and that connection between storytelling and sex, folks, is a whole other topic).

** I can’t imagine that it’s healthy to desensitize ourselves to tragedy like this all the time. It might explain in part why we’re willing to go to war and don’t step in to stop human rights violations. We accuse kids of being desensitized to violence through video games, but anyone who consumes popular entertainment—perhaps even novels—is in the same boat. Or is it good to have thick skins? Would we all die of fear if we weren’t toughened up by tales of little kids being cooked by witches and eaten by wolves?

*** Reality shows do employ writers, at least to edit the footage and make the “stories” hang together better for viewers. And writers for some of the game-show types, like Survivor and The Great Race, basically contrive the whole show. (Great article here on the inside scoop by a reality-show writer.) One show, Storage Wars, recently suffered a scandal when former star Dave Hester accused the producers of planting valuable items in the storage lockers to give an edge to some competitors and make the stories more compelling. I must come out here and admit that, scandal or no, I love Storage Wars—it’s one of my favorite guilty pleasures, and I’m squarely on Team Brandi. I was also a big fan of the tragic-in-retrospect Anna Nicole. One critic summed up my feelings about that show: “Why doesn’t somebody put down the camera and help her?”

Little Things That Editors Love

A while back, I was talking with my friend, the poet Amy MacLennan, about an odd topic. We’ve both been reader/editors for literary journals and publishers, which means we’ve both spent many hours wading through piles of submissions, logging them in and sorting them into the Yes pile, the No pile, and the Maybe pile. The odd topic was this: Once in a while, a moment comes around when an editor is sitting there with two poems or short stories, both of which she likes, but only one of which she can accept. Maybe the fiction anthology is down to its last slot, or there’s room for one two-page poem, but not two. What will sway this editor to pick one piece of writing over another when, for all practical purposes, they’re equally good?

This is when little things become important—strange little things that an editor starts to notice when she’s read 300 submissions in a row. Picking one piece over another at this point may be a very unscientific process, one that boils down to a bit of charm, or a small annoyance, that the writer inadvertently sprinkled into his or her submission. Every editor’s different, and there’s no accounting for pet peeves. But let’s assume that I’m sitting there with two pieces of writing in my hands—one yours, and one that’s somebody else’s. Assuming that both of them feature stellar craft and suit my taste, what little things can you do in your submission that will make me root for you?

1. Surprise me.

By “surprise,” I don’t mean put a cockroach in the envelope, or tack another bloody O. Henry ending onto your short story. (Don’t get me started on O. Henry abuse.) The kind of surprise I like is, for instance, a sonnet that startles me with its gorgeous language set against an unusual topic—say, hospital food or safety deposit boxes. Or a short story that’s in the form of an accident report or a shopping list. This is the kind of jolt that lifts one good poem or story over another good one, a certain transcendence that makes an editor feel like she’s discovering truly inventive writing, perhaps even changing the course of literature. What editor doesn’t want that?

2. Include a short, straightforward bio with a few decent credentials and nothing cutesy.

Notice that this has nothing to do with your story or poem; this is all about the cover letter. Even if you have no publishing credits whatsoever, this is where you play it straight and say that you’re a stay-at-home mom or retired plumber or whatever, and maybe you’ve taken a few creative writing classes. If you have good credits—well-known literary journals, or small ones—list three to five of them*, and maybe a contest or two that you won, a degree you earned, or somebody famous you studied with, and keep it around 50 words. That’s it—no soliloquies, and no jokes. Humor in your story or poem is fine, but humor in a cover letter is like target-shooting in a strange, dark room—you’ll probably miss, and things will just go wildly wrong from there. If you’re a writer who likes mantras, here’s one for the cover letter: Do not scare off the editor.

3. Keep your cover letter simple.

This goes hand in hand with the short, straightforward bio, but it encompasses the entire look of your cover letter. When I was reading submissions for an anthology a while back, I was surprised at how annoyed I got with the overdecorated cover letters. I saw all sorts, from big splashy author logos to pastel photos of ripply lakes and aphorisms about dancing in the rain. All of those things qualify as too much information. I’m a sucker for elegant touches, like bullet points between the state and zip code, or the little telephone icon before a phone number. But after seeing so many methed-up cover letters, I’m leaning more and more toward the humble, plain-Jane variety, with the writer’s name and address at the top left-hand corner in the same font as the rest of the letter. (Needless to say, avoid frou-frou fonts, or the kind that a former co-worker called “too fontsy.”) The main attraction should be your poem or story; for the cover letter, the only rule of thumb is that it should not be distracting. If it does come down to you and that other author, don’t make the editor think, “Hmm…the one with the neutral cover letter that doesn’t say much, or the crazy teddy-bear lady?”

4. Just send one or two entries. Not twenty. Not fifty.

One exception to this: It might actually be OK to send twenty or fifty entries in to a contest. You have to pay for every one, so you’ll be helping them keep the contest going, and that’s not a bad thing. But if you’ve got twenty genuinely good stories or poems, they’ll do better work for you if you spread them around rather than putting all your literary eggs in one basket. And if you’re submitting to a journal or anthology—well, let’s just say that when an editor sees thirty-eight identical envelopes in the mail bin, he probably won’t be thinking, “I bet I’ll love this person’s work and will be thrilled to read every one of these!” Again, editor-ay, no air-scay.

5. Do any of the following, some of which are completely out of your control:

Be a little kid.

I love getting submissions from kids. I don’t care if the story is wildly inappropriate for our publication; these small people with their hand-scrawled cover letters and drawings of their hamsters just kill me. That’s not to say that I’ll accept the piece. But I will send the nicest rejection letter you ever got.

Be one of many people from your small town who sent in a submission.

I love this too. I’m fascinated by the little batches of envelopes that come in from the same tiny town in Kansas or Manitoba or wherever. Obviously these people know each other; they’re probably in a workshop or night class together. And because I’ve been in those workshops and classes where we all ganged up and tried for the same publications, and then laughed about it over coffee later, I’m instantly on your side. Bonus points if you’re from the same family.

Hail from an exotic-sounding place.

This is completely immature on my part, but I will give you a slight edge if you live someplace that sounds really cool, like Black Kitten Road or Woolgoolga, Australia.

Next up: There’s a flip side to this, of course. What dog-doodies should you avoid to keep your work out of the rejection pile? Stay tuned…

* Bonus pet peeve: authors who list every place they’ve ever been published, complete with the title of each poem or story, in a big honkin’ paragraph.

Photo by Niklas Bildhauer