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The 100 Rejection Myth
Rejection sucks.
When I first started submitting short stories a couple of years ago, I knew they would happen (see my previous post on being a reject) but of course I don’t like them. However, they’re inevitable so to prepare myself I read blogs and insights from other writers and there was one bit of advice I saw time and time again.
Aim for 100 rejections. Not acceptances. Rejections.
WHY? If rejections suck, why are they your main goal? Shouldn’t you celebrate good things? What do you do when you reach that target? Print out the rejections and wear them like a shroud? Whine to friends, family and strangers that no one understands your art? Eat a pound of fudge and cry while watching the Mano: Hands of Fate episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the millionth time? I mean, I was going to do that last one anyways, but it’s always good when I have a reason.
Okay I should probably say that I haven’t even come close to 100 submissions yet overall and as a somewhat lazy person, it may take me a couple of years to get to the oft-touted 100 rejections, so perhaps that’s why I’m so cynical. Full disclosure, I’m actually more of a hobbyist than a serious writer. But I still don’t see the point.
Also full disclosure, I had to write hobbyist about 10 times because my fingers and Autocorrect conspired against me to write ‘hobbit’. I have no reason to add this but I just found it funny.
I want a second breakfast now.
So instead of aiming for 100 rejections, what should your writing goal be? Well, that’s up to the individual and as someone who can barely keep their houseplants alive, I’m not sure I should be giving advice to anyone about anything. However, I came up with some ideas anyways:
- Celebrate each acceptance (that one’s a given).
- Aim for submissions, not rejections. That means you’re trying at least.
- Eat a cookie of your choice every time you receive a personal note/feedback from the editor. Those babies are the golden tickets of the writing world and they’re awfully hard to come by.
- Eat a cookie anyways. They are happy-inducing.
And here’s what else you should probably start doing:
- Realizing you’re doing math and math sucks.
- Don’t focus on the negative. Work on your self-esteem, you jerk.
- Try not to compare yourself to others. Each writer will have their ups and downs and EVERYONE get rejections.
- Understand you are not a rejection letter. You are a writer. Even if a piece remains unpublished, you wrote that and no one can take it away from you.
Now I’m not going to criticize those who give or follow the 100 rejection advice, after all it’s subjective. All I’m asking is for you to try and stay positive in your writing journey and get your head out of the stats game once in awhile.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have fudge and MST3K waiting. No, I didn’t receive a rejection. It’s just Tuesday.
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The Short Story Graveyard
If you’re a writer, you know the feeling of the burst of inspiration. It usually comes in the shower, or when you’re falling asleep at night. It’s an idea that you MUST WRITE DOWN. It will be brilliant, it will be spectacular. It will rekindle your love of words, cure your athlete’s foot, and help you to grow thicker, longer, more luxurious hair. The idea is just that powerful.
You finally get the words down. And then…
Game over, man game over. But it might not happen right away. You might read it and say “This is the best thing I’ve ever written” and submit it, but after 54 rejections, you begin to have doubts.
That’s when you mercilessly murder that story and bury it deep where no one will ever find it. Sure instead of killing your darling, you might hack it up and use it for spare parts, but the soul of the piece is gone to wherever bad little stories go.
If I’m being honest, I’ve kept a few braindead short stories on life support far longer than they should have been. Allow me to share the not-so-dearly departed.
In Memoriam:
Artichoke: A refined gentleman is upset at a peer’s boorish behavior and is especially offended when the bloke doesn’t know how to eat an artichoke properly so he murders him in the same way you would peel apart an artichoke. I felt I didn’t go far enough in the first draft, so years later I decided to add gore and cannibalism. It made it worse. Cause of death: Artichoke Heart Attack.
The Lump: A woman forced to work from home goes slowly crazy and finds a lump hiding inside of her house. It follows her around for days and then suddenly one day she beats it up and stabs it to death. In the end, her neighbor asks where her husband has gone off to. Cause of death: Hanging – as in “this premise was hanging by a thread and the whole thing collapsed under its will to be clever”.
Eddie’s Last Job: I think this one might have ended up totally deleted but as I recall a redneck guy has a beer with his friend Eddie who has volunteered to be experimented on by a professor of some sorts and now has something crawling under his skin. I just remember a lot of swear words and two guys talking over beers. Nothing else much happened. Cause of death: Cirrhosis, probably.
So those are the stories inhabiting my short story graveyard and thankfully they have been put to rest, never to be heard from again.
Until they rise again from the dead. Oh crap.
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Nano Judgment Day
I write a novel a year. None have ever been published.
Why? Because they’re my National Novel Writing Month novels. During the month of November, the goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel (roughly 1667 words a day). At the end you get the satisfaction of knowing you wrote… a whole bunch of words.
I’m doing it again this month and I’m terribly behind on my word count. This has been a pattern for the last, oh, let’s say 7 years. So instead of writing tonight like I should, I thought I’d revisit all of my Nano novels and take a trip down memory lane to see which, if any, are actually salvagable.
Ready to jump into the dung pile with me? Good.
2011 – My first Nano. I wrote 3,000 words based on a dream I had. Water was killing people dead. The dream was better. I quit. Verdict: A tiny heap of dung.
2012 – My first successful Nano. It was about half-vampires (yawn) and I did horrible things to most of my characters. At the end of the novel, I realized that a 12-year-old girl got away with nothing bad happening to her so I made her eat a cat. This was the best-written scene in the book. Verdict: Still might keep the cat part.
2013 – I came up with an idea of a B-movie actress aging out of the business and saving a small town in Louisiana from an ancient evil. This was probably my best work to date although I don’t write in a straight line so there are scenes everywhere. Verdict: We can rebuild it.
2014 – This one involved a writer’s characters coming to life or…something. I got to 50,000 by rewriting the opening scene hundreds of times. There are also several paragraphs devoted to my hair. Verdict: It’s dead, Jim.
2015 – Swamps! Louisiana! Sirens! No, not the blaring kind, the kind that lure young men to a watery death. This one was a lot of fun although I can’t figure out why I had two Nano novels set in Louisana. I actually have to visit there someday. Verdict: Could use some seasoning. C’est tout.
2016 – I didn’t learn from my first half-vampire mishap so I wrote them again. Half vampires form an AA group to stop drinking blood. The idea was good but the main character was so dull I might as well have named him Blandie McBlandovich. Verdict: Put a stake in it. It’s done.
2017 – Two goody two-shoes find each other and then decide not to be good anymore. I lost the plot but it was still fun when someone at a write-in was crying over killing a character in their novel while I had one of mine brutally hack up another. Verdict: Don’t drink, don’t smoke, what do you do?
2018 – Ghosts get together to solve a mystery. I didn’t finish. This is the first Nano since 2012 I didn’t win. I hated everything about it and if it was possible to kill ghosts, I would have found a way. Verdict: Sometimes, dead is betta’.
2019 – Movie monsters are invading a book store. That’s all you need to know. This is my first Nano novel written in the first person unless you count that unfortunate incident where I wrote two chapters in the third person because consistency IS FOR THE WEAK. Verdict: It’s on life support but still could pull through. We’re monitoring the situation carefully.
So that’s my Nano adventure and while most of these are headed for the dung pile, there are a couple that might serve as fertilizer from which flowers bloom. Just no more half-vampires. But then again… 🤔
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Learn to Submit the Wrong Way!
Hey you! Are you looking to take a step backwards? Do you have a crippling fear of success? Does the thought of never getting published appeal to you?
Great! All you need to do is follow these simple steps and you too can become the unsuccessful writer your haters and archenemies already think you are. It’s easy!
Guidelines are for wusses. Yeah sure you could follow the rules but why? You are uniqueâ„¢. They want it in Shunn’s format, double-spaced with proper titling? Nah, you submit that shit in comic sans with no visible paragraphs and 12-inch borders. Make it your own. Bonus points if you submit it via a link because if there’s one thing editors love, it’s downloading stuff from an unknown source from someone they don’t know. Trust me.
Word count, smord count. 7000 word limit? I don’t think so. Not when you can send them your 100,000 word epic bondage/erotica novel about an elf and a fairy finding love despite their differences and against the wishes of their warring parents in the enchanted forest. Here’s a hint though, only send them most of the novel. Don’t give away the ending. Once they get started, they’ll be hooked and you always want to leave them wanting more.
Hard sells mean sell hard. Some of the markets include a list of hard sells such as zombies, vampires, and paranormal romances between the two. They also might list subjects to avoid such as rape, violence or far-leaning political stories. Disregard these. If you have a story about how Zombie Bill Clinton battled Vampire George Bush until they gave into the passion and became lovers but then it all ended in domestic abuse, why, surely the slush readers will let that one slide. It’s ART!
Reading is for losers. You are not some ordinary word nerd, you are an ALPHABET JOCK. Actually bothering to read the market you’re submitting to will only take up precious time – time you could be using to pump some serious literary iron, bro. Hike up the wedgie on all those places who only want certain types of stories in something called “genre”. That’s a ritzy word that means nothing. Splatter your submissions everywhere – and let God sort them out.
No means maybe. No means many things in the writing business but it never means no. If someone dares to send you a rejection letter, here’s what you need to do:
- Tell off the editor. They are big stupid meany dumb heads who are far too immature to appreciate good literature. Write an email (or several) letting them know of this fact.
- Better yet, say it on social media, but be sure to tag their accounts. If you harass them enough, they might finally realize you exist and your great thirst for relevance will finally be quenched.
- Change a word or two and re-send the story. Those two words will make all the difference. They’ll love it now.
Oh and if it’s a form rejection, be sure to bother them for feedback. After all, don’t you deserve an explanation? Of course, they’re wrong but like teacher says, they need to show their work.
Do all of the above, and I guarantee you’ll be able to live a private, publish-free existence unencumbered by the extravagant trappings of the glitzy, writer lifestyle. And who doesn’t want that?
Trust me.