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Yes, for each of the last three days I have received a rejection notice. One came back within twenty-four hours. Ain't the internet grand?
Disheartening? Yes, but at least I have my stuff out there.
And while I know the stories may not be perfect, I do not believe they are garbage. Some of my submissions are borderline because they fall between the cracks of genre. Knowing this, I still take a shot.
Today I will find three new places for these stories and take three more shots.
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alliedfive, I hope you have the surrogate story out circulating. That one is great. I'm sure it will find a good home.
Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009
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posted
I think I managed three rejections in one day, back in the days when I was writing more and submitting more...also back in the days of sending in printed manuscripts. I had a lot in circulation then.
Not that any of it was any good, mind you...it was the best I could do at the time, but, by my own standards of just a couple years later, they were all downright lousy.
I'd like to have more in circulation right now, but I'm just not putting out the material like I used to.
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It's not even disheartening really. To give you some perspective, I've made probably in excess of 200 submissions and only had a single acceptance so far (well two if you count the recent one where the editor accepted it and then went a little crazy and rejected it again) and thats in the course of almost 2 years now. It took me a year to get my first sale. It comes with the territory and you shouldn't let it phase you in the slightest...the vast majority of writers get many, many MANY rejections before even every selling anything.
alliedfive, get submitting RIGHT NOW, or I'll be forced to send a contigent of my characters after you, and you know how scary they can be.
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I like your attitude, genevive. I don't find rejections disheartening at all, they're what makes me feel like a writer. If I don't get at least one every 10 days or so, then I feel depressed. And the rejections that come back quickly are always the best kind--a couple of weeks ago I got a 1 year 8 day form rejection: I won't be subbing there again in a hurry.
Good luck with the submissions--I hope you find a good home for them
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You guys rock! And make me feel like a slacker. Must submit more...
My grandmother gave me a memory box a few years back. I think she expected me to put pictures and letters and junk in there. Instead, that is where I collect my rejection notes. Hey, they're memories, right?
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I have gone a very long time not submitting anything. I have just started. When I got my first rejection I was excited. Not because I like getting rejected, but because I was finally putting myself in a position to be rejected. I know publication is not an easy process, but writers who never submit have a %100 chance of not being published versus those who do! So good luck!
Posts: 42 | Registered: Aug 2009
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Rejections are tangible pieces of evidence you are engaged in putting words on paper.
For my first two books (unpublished) my goal was to receive X number of rejections to prove that I got my work out there.
But rejections do hurt a bit. I'm in a bit of a hiatus at present to bring my writing skills up a bit after a flurry of non-marketable stories. (I did get a poem and a story accepted this summer, though)
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I never kept a running total, but of the one hundred and eighty-some stories on my opus list that I've actually submitted to market, I figure I got somewhere around fifteen hundred or so rejections on them.
This figure excludes poetry, where I usually got twenty or thirty rejections per submitted poem.
(And it's "one hundred eighty-some stories" 'cause somewhere in the last year I wasted my comptuer file of recent story writing and submission and haven't yet reconstructed my numbers and figures. (The stories survived, the data on them didn't.))
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King's story is interesting because he sold a lot of his early short stories to a men's magazine called Gallery (I think). The editor of that mag really liked King's work so almost always bought his short fiction.
I think a lot of it is trying to find that one editor that gets what you're saying, or, at least, how you're saying it. Needle in a haystack, I know, but, hey, it happens.
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As Merloin has stated in so many words, never give up!
Just sold story #10 today. It was rejected by 12 magazines before it found a home. Half of the rejections gave me some encouraging words for it. One (clarkesworld) took all of four hours to send back a rejection.
Keep at it. Write, submit, wait patiently. There are a few places that will provided some comments for a rejection (get ready though, some can be rough). Point is, if you want to be a writer, submit like one.
I was having a rather bad time when I first posted this and I'm not usually one for getting blue. There was a lack of sleep and a few dozen other problems and it just got to me.
I've gotten at least one more rejection since but I knew I was stretching the style for the publication. I'm going to review everything I've gotten back and turn it around this weekend. By Monday, all of my finished pieces should be out again.
I have a framed quote hanging above my desk that I can't credit because the mat covers the name, but it says: "Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail!"
It's a philosophy I'm trying to make permanent in my mind.
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One of the problems is that pro writers VERY rarely talk about their rejections.
One exception is Jay Lake. Several published novels, more on the way, and incredibly prolific with short stories - I think well over 200 have been published in the last few years. It's easy to see writers like that and assume they are selling everything they submit.
They aren't. His latest set of figures was that he sells about 1 in 4. So he still gets 75% rejections.
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