At the beginning of my layoff, I realized I finally had time to devote to writing. There was one particular short story that had been bubbling around in my mind for a while. It was heavily influenced by the storm of emotions I had had during a particularly challenging part of my life, the year that I had spent with my sister as she slowly died from stomach cancer. It was still a fiction story, I wasn’t yet ready to actually write about my feelings during that time, and when I finally finished the story, I thought it was actually pretty good (pats self on back).
So, I researched places that would accept short stories. I found a podcast that I loved listening to, but when I read the submission guidelines I found that my story wasn’t told in the right point of view. So, I rolled up my virtual sleeves and started on the major revision. Picture sweat beading on my brown and me hunched over my laptop, typing away furiously. When I finished, again, I thought, this is good. I turned it in.
And waited.
And waited.
Nothing.
So, I did what I always do; I Googled how to go about submitting short stories, and the key is to keep submitting. Many places don’t accept simultaneous submissions, where you submit one story to multiple publications at once. So, I thought, I’ll find another podcast to submit to, and I’ll create a brand new story. This time, I would research the podcast submission guidelines before I started writing. My story felt solid and actually scary. I polished it up and clicked “submit.”
Nothing.
Ok. Let’s keep going. I had the writing bug in me now, and I started another story. This one had me researching how crows sound compared with other birds, the color of New Mexico road runners, and the types of animal predators that roam the Rio Grande. It felt good to write, even if I hadn’t yet heard back from the other podcasts. This time I picked a standard magazine. I felt nervous as I formatted the manuscript. Again, I clicked submit.
This time, I heard back!
“Unfortunately, the story does not meet our needs at this time. We’re going to pass.”
Ahhh. My first rejection letter. I’m not going to lie, I had some tiny part of me that believed that I would buck the odds and get one of my first short stories that I’d submitted accepted right away. It’s, of course, a cliche, but the rejection letter did feel like a punch to the stomach. But, I slept on it, and already started to feel better.
I started to reread the story. The title stank. And, yes, I definitely saw where it could be edited. I still think that it’s a good story, but it needs some editing.
What I’ve learned in this whole process, though, is that I love creating and polishing stories. While I was waiting, I had gotten started on yet another short story, and I was already having fun researching extreme haunted houses.
I recently read an article where the author didn’t have a goal for submissions for the year. Instead, they set a goal for rejections (100 to be precise). This seemed like a much healthier way to approach the process. When they set this as their goal, they got 5 acceptances despite, or rather because of, the 100 rejections. Because they had continued to work on their writing and continued to keep submitting, they could finally experience the joy of publishing a story.
While my crow story could use some editing, I’m going to set it aside and keep going with my haunted house story. I’m going to shoot for even more rejections and see how far I can get!
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