Fight Those Rejection Slips

More and more rejection slips come in the mail every week. Pink ones, white ones, if you are lucky a handwritten one. But how do you deal with rejection? How many times can you send the same piece out? How are you going to get your big break with a large literary magazine? If you are asking yourself these questions, start over. These are the wrong questions.

Like many young writers, I decided that I wanted my poems and stories in only the best literary magazines. My writing was just as good as everyone else’s, so if I sent it in to as many literary magazines as possible, someone was bound to like it, right? Wrong. After listening to a podcast on the Poets and Writers website that interviewed leading editors from today’s top literary magazines, I knew I was way off with my questions.

I think every editor on the podcast said that the magazine s/he edits for accepts about one percent of the submissions it receives. At this point you’ll probably ask the question “why do I even try?” One editor explained that this is not necessarily accurate information. If you narrowed down the percentage to the number of people that followed the submission guidelines and submitted works that applied to the magazine, the acceptance rate would be much higher. She even said that people would send in Sci Fi and Romance stories when her literary journal obviously did not publish those kinds of stories.

So, in translation, follow the submission guidelines and read at least a few pieces from the genre that you are submitting to from the magazine. And as for those questions: Instead of resending the same piece over and over to magazines, take a look at it after each of your rejections. How can you improve it? What do you think the editor didn’t like about it? Is there a literary journal that accepts work close to what you have? Another thing to consider: there are plenty of literary journals out there; do your research. You do not have to be published in the largest or most notable literary journal at first. You are a writer no matter what journal has published you.