I seem to have been talking about rejection in one way or another a bit lately, so I thought I'd share a post with you.
Personally I am of the opinion that you've got to give people the chance to say no, getting rejected is part of the process of getting published, and if you're not trying to get it published, that can sometimes be because you're afraid of rejection. That's OK, rejection sucks, but I was inspired by Kim Liao who, in this 2016 article described her successful friend's technique, of aiming for one hundred rejections a year. As Liao points out, this isn't a new idea. In his excellent book, On Writing, Stephen King talks about collecting his rejection slips on a nail. Liao herself decoupaged a desk with her rejection slips, to encourage herself to move on, to revisit, revise, to find better fits for her work.
I've got to be honest, sometimes you get rejected because your work sucks. Even very famous writers sometimes create work that sucks, and at least you're less likely to get that stuff published! Sometimes your work might be great, but that won't mean it's great for the particular thing you've submitted it to.
For the last few years I have been following Liao's example of keeping all my poetry submissions in a spreadsheet, so I know what's where, and when I expect to hear back, and I can keep a note of how I'm doing in the quest to reach the hundred rejections. My best attempt so far was in 2017 when I sent out 78 submissions and got 62 rejections. That was in the gap between all kids going to school and my getting some work which actually pays. In 2019 I sent out 36 submissions and so far I've had 22 rejections (last two should be coming soon).
Liao talks about launching "determined air raids of submission grenades". A friend describes what I do in a similar way, lobbing poems through windows (only the open ones), possibly wrapped around bricks. When the poems come back it's kind of nice. I always seem to change them a bit, hopefully making them better, sometimes just shifting their focus a bit. They go back into the pool and when I'm thinking of sending some more out they may well get revised again. Sometimes they get ditched, but even then they go into a graveyard folder, with a possibility of rising again. In the brilliant book How to be a Poet' which she wrote with Jane Commane, and which you can still get from Nine Arches Press, Jo Bell said: “Eventually you will be so serene about rejection that you will be quite disappointed when a poem is accepted because this interrupts the endless recycling process.”
Apart from getting your poems back rejections also give you an opportunity to build a bit on your relationship with the people you're attempting to work with. There are lots of different kinds of rejections. I have only ever had a couple of actual physical paper rejections, and I've just put them into the scrap paper draw with everything else. Mostly I get polite form rejections. I was interested when I interviewed Kate Garrett that she doesn't actually send form rejections, instead typing it out for each rejectee! It is nice when you get something human, and if someone sends me a nice rejection I always get back to them to say thanks (and I'll definitely want to work with them again).
Personally I am of the opinion that you've got to give people the chance to say no, getting rejected is part of the process of getting published, and if you're not trying to get it published, that can sometimes be because you're afraid of rejection. That's OK, rejection sucks, but I was inspired by Kim Liao who, in this 2016 article described her successful friend's technique, of aiming for one hundred rejections a year. As Liao points out, this isn't a new idea. In his excellent book, On Writing, Stephen King talks about collecting his rejection slips on a nail. Liao herself decoupaged a desk with her rejection slips, to encourage herself to move on, to revisit, revise, to find better fits for her work.
I've got to be honest, sometimes you get rejected because your work sucks. Even very famous writers sometimes create work that sucks, and at least you're less likely to get that stuff published! Sometimes your work might be great, but that won't mean it's great for the particular thing you've submitted it to.
For the last few years I have been following Liao's example of keeping all my poetry submissions in a spreadsheet, so I know what's where, and when I expect to hear back, and I can keep a note of how I'm doing in the quest to reach the hundred rejections. My best attempt so far was in 2017 when I sent out 78 submissions and got 62 rejections. That was in the gap between all kids going to school and my getting some work which actually pays. In 2019 I sent out 36 submissions and so far I've had 22 rejections (last two should be coming soon).
Liao talks about launching "determined air raids of submission grenades". A friend describes what I do in a similar way, lobbing poems through windows (only the open ones), possibly wrapped around bricks. When the poems come back it's kind of nice. I always seem to change them a bit, hopefully making them better, sometimes just shifting their focus a bit. They go back into the pool and when I'm thinking of sending some more out they may well get revised again. Sometimes they get ditched, but even then they go into a graveyard folder, with a possibility of rising again. In the brilliant book How to be a Poet' which she wrote with Jane Commane, and which you can still get from Nine Arches Press, Jo Bell said: “Eventually you will be so serene about rejection that you will be quite disappointed when a poem is accepted because this interrupts the endless recycling process.”
Nobody enjoys rejecting people, but for me the worst kind of rejections are those where they can't even be bothered to reject you. They told you when you submitted that they'd only read your previously unpublished poems, and you couldn't send them to anyone else while they considered them and then they didn't even think enough of them to tell you to begone and never darken their door again. Sometimes I'm sure this is an accident, but sometimes it's actual policy. To be honest, it's a policy which just seems rude and entitled to me. If it's too difficult to send off a batch of form emails, what else aren't they technologically capable of doing?
Sometimes of course, I do get attached to pieces, and long to see them do well. Then any rejection
can feel more like a personal insult, and getting several, one after another, can be tough. You can find yourself suspecting that some editors are idiots, or that you yourself aren't good enough or just don't fit in. One thing not to do is tell them these thoughts. It is really important to read the magazines you're submitting to. Maybe you don't fit in there. Maybe your gang is elsewhere. I have become more selective about who I send to, which is probably part of why I'm getting rejected less, although that said, I'm also submitting less to places which seem to have a really low bar, I don't want to see my poem published right next to something I think is awful!
As for quality. Take the opportunity of rejection to give the poem some space, see what's happening around it and in it. Is it as good as it can be? You don't have to write like other people. Other people don't have to think you're good. To be honest, you're unlikely to make any money anyway, so make it as good as you can for you, and find your people, share it, and make it better.
It's worth saying that up until very very recently, women's words and women's experiences weren't seen as things worth writing about, the same is true for marginalised groups. All voices are worth hearing. But maybe our poetry will look different, white men have been writing poetry about men's lives for so long that that is what we have taken poetry to be. That's changing now, and poetry is changing with it, but perhaps we need to accept that there are some who will always believe that men's work on men's experiences is more valid. We don't have to play with them. We can work with others who are raising up the voices of women, of people of colour, of LGBTQ+ people, of people with disabilities, of all the marginalised, to provide space for those voices to be heard, for those experiences to be declared valid.
Where have you been submitting to recently? My latest was to the Federation of Writers (Scotland) anthology. Fingers crossed!
can feel more like a personal insult, and getting several, one after another, can be tough. You can find yourself suspecting that some editors are idiots, or that you yourself aren't good enough or just don't fit in. One thing not to do is tell them these thoughts. It is really important to read the magazines you're submitting to. Maybe you don't fit in there. Maybe your gang is elsewhere. I have become more selective about who I send to, which is probably part of why I'm getting rejected less, although that said, I'm also submitting less to places which seem to have a really low bar, I don't want to see my poem published right next to something I think is awful!
As for quality. Take the opportunity of rejection to give the poem some space, see what's happening around it and in it. Is it as good as it can be? You don't have to write like other people. Other people don't have to think you're good. To be honest, you're unlikely to make any money anyway, so make it as good as you can for you, and find your people, share it, and make it better.
It's worth saying that up until very very recently, women's words and women's experiences weren't seen as things worth writing about, the same is true for marginalised groups. All voices are worth hearing. But maybe our poetry will look different, white men have been writing poetry about men's lives for so long that that is what we have taken poetry to be. That's changing now, and poetry is changing with it, but perhaps we need to accept that there are some who will always believe that men's work on men's experiences is more valid. We don't have to play with them. We can work with others who are raising up the voices of women, of people of colour, of LGBTQ+ people, of people with disabilities, of all the marginalised, to provide space for those voices to be heard, for those experiences to be declared valid.
Where have you been submitting to recently? My latest was to the Federation of Writers (Scotland) anthology. Fingers crossed!
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