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How Many Rejections Does It Take To Get Published?

The photo is two red cherries hanging from a small branch, with the green leaves out of focus. Overlayed are a series of repeating Xes made of handwritten text.

They said, “Ten percent of submissions get published.”

I heard, “Nine out of every ten submissions gets rejected.” So, I decided I’d get one hundred rejections in the hopes of getting those correlating ten acceptances. I sent my work out, documenting the results with a video each month, a hashtag in front of it and a challenge after it, hoping I’d make it to one hundred in a year:

#100RejectionsChallenge.

Spoiler alert: I got there two months early and had seven acceptances to show for it. While my odds weren’t as high as I was hoping for, it turned out the acceptances weren’t the important part of the challenge. The reason so many take up the 100 Rejections Challenge is because we learn in one year what would have taken a lifetime to learn otherwise.

My first step was to let the world know I was doing the challenge, so I’d have people holding me accountable. I’m a big believer in putting things out to the universe and getting the support that magically flows after. I created a video about the challenge and posted it on YouTube. I shared the video on my social media and my website. Sure, I needed material for these online places– places I hadn’t occupied before now, places I wasn’t sure how to occupy yet but was told were necessary to occupy, these places that seemed to absorb my time so completely– but it was also a genuine desire to connect with others and encourage them and myself.

When I started, I had nothing submission-worthy to send out. The first push was a writing practice. As a wife and mother of two, I decided to write while everyone was still asleep, and no one could make demands of me. I set my alarm to wake me fifteen minutes earlier than usual and I moved that number back by another fifteen minutes every few days until I was getting up an hour before everyone else, then two. I’d gently given myself time to write every morning and it became time I safeguarded viciously, Gollum with their Precious. I’d created the space for my writing that every other writer insists we have, and I’d done it not because it was accepted advice but because I now had a public declaration of accountability.

I didn’t want to let anyone down.

I couldn’t let myself off the hook.

There were mornings where I’d get situated on the couch, in the dark, my laptop open only to hear a little voice, “Momma? I want cuddles.” Sometimes saying, “Go climb in bed with Daddy,” would work and off the little feet would pound. Other times, “No! I want you,” meant I’d put the laptop on the end table, slide to the other side of the couch, tucking my kiddo up against the cushions, a blanket draped over us both. I’d try to breathe like sleeping without succumbing, counting the writing minutes I was losing while berating myself for not being present. These fleeting parenting moments were precious. I should enjoy them, right? I shouldn’t think about pages left unfilled.

If I was lucky, I’d be able to sneak back to the other end and continue writing. If I was lucky, I’d fall asleep and enjoy cuddles with my youngest.

Out of necessity, I created a spreadsheet to track the pieces I was writing, where they were in the writing and editing process, whether they were short stories, flash, essays, drabbles. I added a sheet for places I knew I wanted to submit to: Modern Love, Kenyon Review, The Sun— pipe dreams. As I learned where the cool kids were submitting, I added them to my list too: Nunum, Split Lip, Barrelhouse. Cruising Submittable and searching for “local” places I added even more: Cutbank, Bear Paw Arts Journal, Whitefish Review.

In June, a full six months after beginning, I had my first piece ready to send and the 100 rejections clock began ticking. A few days later, I sent out my first bit of flash. A few days after, out went my first short story. I’d write a piece in the morning, send it to friends for edits in the afternoon, and edit it in the evening when my kids were in bed after suggestions came in. By the end of the day, I was fried and couldn’t handle anything creative. Luckily, editing wasn’t about creating, but cleaning up, tightening, and clicking the blue underline that claimed I forgot a comma.

If no one had sent me suggestions that day, I spent the evening reading books by other writers. Some of them about craft, some of them about lifestyle, all of them full of ideas, some overlapping. I curated a shelf of my favorites; the ones I was sure I’d refer to. This shelf has changed greatly over the months as I gift books to the library or friends to make room for a new book I’ll never refer to.

In July, I had my first rejection: “There is much to admire in your writing, however after careful consideration we feel your submission isn’t quite right for our next issue.” While it sucked–as all rejections do–it was also exciting because it was my first one. There were tears in my eyes and a smile on my face. I didn’t crawl into a hole and disappear feeling like a failure, because getting to that first rejection was a win. The challenge kept me going, and tenacity is more important in a writer than just about any other skill.

Knowing that life would get in my way, I further challenged myself: one submission for every rejection. When a rejection came in, I had to take that piece, edit it, and resubmit it. If I couldn’t get it to where it needed to be, I’d pick a different piece I’d been working on and submit that same day. I’d picked this trick up from reading about minimalism. The idea was if you don’t want to collect too much stuff, you must keep a “one thing in, one thing out” attitude. When applied to rejections/submissions, it kept me active, focused, and driven.

three sentences of Sunday's text that reads: What had I learned about craft in that time? Where could I remove extraneous words, where could add a bit of description, did this piece have a point? Ultimately, I’d have to ask myself if it was something I was proud of, if it was something I would want people to read and associate with me. (End quote). This is in a green box on top of the hand-written pages.

Taking the advice I’d heard, I looked at the rejected piece with fresh eyes. I hadn’t seen it in a month or more, but that month already felt like a lifetime. What had I learned about craft in that time? Where could I remove extraneous words, where could add a bit of description, did this piece have a point? Ultimately, I’d have to ask myself if it was something I was proud of, if it was something I would want people to read and associate with me. Most pieces were submitted again somewhere else after heavy edits, some were resubmitted without edits, and very few went into my “archives.”

At one point I reached out to my rejector and audaciously asked for any suggestions they had to make the writing something they might accept. Their response was lovely and I promptly ignored it. I had no idea how to institute the suggestions, “the story has some very definite strengths that don’t go unappreciated. The close perspective and strong narrative voice, for example, are both done very well. In terms of improvement, you might consider ways to bring the main character to life – adding depth through personal details, motives, a past / sense of baggage, etc. This will help create a stronger sense of character as well as amping up the stakes – ultimately giving the ending more of an impact.”

What?

By September, I had my first acceptance with an editing caveat: “could you add in some specificity to ground this beautiful piece.” I danced around the house singing about being a published writer. My itty-bitty flash piece had been accepted by a brand-new journal and you’d have thought I won the Nobel. It took nine months after starting the challenge and three months after sending out my first piece to get an acceptance, and I don’t know that I’d have had the grit to keep going with something so delayed in gratification without the challenge behind me.

Now that I’ve had over one hundred forty rejections, I know they come in many forms, but when I started, I had no idea there was a difference between a form letter and a personal one, no idea that when one letter says, “Please consider us for future work,” it’s meaningless, whereas in another letter it’s sincere.

Some form letters are obvious and flat: “We regret to inform you that we will not be publishing your work,” others are pretty full of themselves: “At this time, the editors at XXX have chosen not to publish (piece) in the next available issue of XXX,” and a very few are quite exquisite: “While (piece) wasn’t ultimately accepted, our readers had good words for the piece; many included ‘lovely’ in their comments,” and “While this submission has not been chosen for publication, we wanted you to know that your work generated a lot of discussion and made it into the final round for consideration. Specifically, one of our readers commented ‘I have friends who’ve gone through similar experiences and think stories like this should be shared, especially while abortion/pregnancy is a dominant topic in the news/on women’s mind.’”

And while the form rejections themselves don’t interest me; the personalized rejections do. There’s so much to take from a personalized rejection, knowing the difference can sometimes be the key between getting published or not: the name at the end, the specific words used to describe your submission and to request more work, the same words we ought to use when making the next submission to that name.

On a couple of occasions, I even received advice on where else to try sending the piece, which is phenomenally helpful and kind, “Here are some magazines who publish similar works…,” and “Here are some other publication opportunities….” That extra vote of confidence from a rejection was sometimes all I needed to take the piece, review it for edits, and turn it right back around to submit somewhere else. Once it even paid off with an acceptance from the recommended publisher.

By the time I received my one hundredth rejection, I’d also: created a writing practice, an editing procedure, a submission strategy and tracking system, and I had the beginnings of a social media platform.  Mostly though, the #100RejectionChallenge taught me tenacity, resilience, and routine, necessary qualities in this brutal industry. I highly recommend it.

Sunday Dutro is a creative nonfiction writer with publications in or forthcoming with Bear Paw Arts Journal, Panorama Journal, Drexel’s Paper Dragon, and UCDavis #aggiesinlove. She is a UCDavis, Writing By Writers Manuscript Boot-Camp, and Haven I Writing Retreat alum and lives in Montana with her husband, children, dogs, cats, and chickens. She is actively working on a memoir. Find her at sundaydutro.com

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