Finally! Rejected 300 Times!

Finally! I’ve been rejected 300 times! Glory be! I shall mark down this red-letter day so as never to forget it.

OK, kidding, but only halfway.

Let me start with some context. I submit my short stories to a TON of publications with hopes of getting published, and I submit them– as well as scripts– into contests. The overall goal is simple, I am trying to get published/get recognition/win or place in a contest.

I want to write. I love writing. Scripts, novels, short stories, I write them all. If I could make a career out of that, or even half a career, I’d be thrilled. So, I’m going at it from all angles. Seeking representation from agents and managers for my novels, seeking representation from agents and managers for my scripts, for my short stories that I think would make great IP, and of course, submitting stories and scripts out EVERYWHERE. Getting published is a true joy, and it is obviously a helpful step in the progression I am trying to make.

But you get rejected SO MUCH when you send stuff out.

Of course. There are so many great writers out there, so little room in publications for their work to appear, etc. So, often you can’t make the cut, even if you only miss it by a little. The rejections used to hurt a lot when I first started out. They hurt less now for a few reasons. One, I just realized how often it’s going to happen so I am going to have to just buck up and deal with it. Two, I used to send out one, two, maybe three stories to publications and wait around for responses. When you hear you weren’t accepted and that was one of one things you were waiting on, or one of three, it hurts. Because somewhere between 33% and 100% of the things you were hoping for were just dashed away.

That’s not good for your psyche. It’s also not efficient. I realized I was going to get rejected so many times before getting accepted once… and then still get rejected so many times before getting accepted a second time, third time, etc. If I were to see eventual success that I wished to achieve, at that rate, it was going to take me a couple of decades to get there. So, new plan, which was easy because…

I write. I write a lot. I love to write a lot.

I’ve just been scribbling away and stockpiling stories, so now, I am submitting stuff all over the place. So many stories that can be sent out, some publications accepting simultaneous submissions so that means some stories can be sent out to multiple places. But I don’t just submit a couple stories and wait for the results, I just keep submitting. Over and over and over. I tend to have at least 20 things pending at all times. It’s good, I’ll have no idea where I might get accepted so I have to try everywhere and try and hit all those places in a quick and efficient manner. Also, when I get a notice from one publication that my story wasn’t accepted, I usually think something along the lines of, “Ah, another rejection. That sucks. Oh well, got plenty of other things pending.”

Really, that’s usually how it goes. Some of them, admittedly, I want more than others. They hurt a little more. But in the end, I always realize I have a bunch more things pending, so I always have that hope that one of those other ones will land.

Also, I look at it like this. My first 10-20 submissions I was doing at a slower rate, after that, I picked it up a bit. I didn’t get accepted my first time until my 68th try. It took a little while to get there, because I was submitting at a slower rate. After my 5th publication, it took another 63 tries until my 6th (yes, I track it all like a lame-o) but that didn’t take nearly as long as the first 68 because I was submitting more often. So, I saw success sooner… in a calendar year anyway. Between publication number 7 and 8, 74 attempts, my biggest drought… but shorter in time than the other two.

Here’s the other thing, getting rejected is good. It reminds me that I am trying. I know those numbers aren’t set in stone, it’s not like inevitably I was fated to not get published until my 68th try. Right? Any number of factors could have changed that, submitting to different places, submitting to other places sooner. But I think of it in a way where, overall, those numbers were all likely to happen in that way, more or less. Published 1st time on my 68th attempt, 2nd time on my 80th, 6th time on my 178th, 8th time on my 278th…

So, I needed to get rejected a bunch of times before I saw that success. If I saw a bunch of rejection and slowed down, or stopped, I wouldn’t reach those successes. The rejections are necessary stepping stones to get to where I want to be. Yeah, they still hurt. I haven’t totally tricked myself into thinking the rejection is phenomenal. But I remind myself that they’re important, they need to happen. And some rejections come with notes as to why it didn’t work. Sometimes a story gets rejected 8 times, even without notes, and I wonder about it. With notes or without notes, I go back and look at these stories, sometimes I think they’re still good and just haven’t found their home yet. Other times, I realize they aren’t good enough. That’s why they keep getting rejected. Good! Let’s fix ‘em up!

And I do that. The rejection is like getting sick. It sucks. But now your body builds up a little bit of an immunity to it (editing) and hopefully, that can help you in the future. (That’s how germs work, right? I still spray Lysol in my eyes whenever someone coughs within a 10-foot radius of me just to be safe.) The rejections remind me that some of these stories were not as fantastic as I once thought, and when I reread my work, I often see that. I see the mistakes. I make edits.

And each rejection just reminds me I am getting closer and closer to my ultimate goals.

So, of course, when I got rejected for the 300th time… thrilled! Right?

A little more context. I sort of view it as 289 rejections because it is 289 straight-up rejections. What I mean by that is 289 times I just got an email back and they were like, “Nope.” But of the 300 times I was ultimately turned down, 11 times it wasn’t a straight-up nope. 4 times I moved on to a second round of a competition, 4 times I was short listed, 2 other times I moved on to the semifinals round of a competition, and 1 other time I made the Top 50 of a competition… and then all, ultimately, wound up being a Nope. However, I view those as successes. They’re like bronze and silver medals to me. In fact, some of those have actually gained me recognition, one got me a meeting with a manager. So, in the end, I got the “nope” 300 times, but I only got the straight-nope 289 times. As many will tell you, it’s the straight-nope that’ll hit you harder. So potent. Or is that straight-dope? In any event, the other 11 times were successes to me.

And lest I forget, 9 times I have been published. However, I have it marked down as 10… because I may have been notified of another story of mine which was accepted for publication, my 10th, but it hasn’t yet come out. Soon enough.

But when that happened, my 10th acceptance, it was my 305th attempt. So, I was 10/305. They wouldn’t let Steph Curry jack up threes all game if that was his rate, but hey, writing is different. Way different. I’m not shooting at a 10-foot-tall basket, the basket is 100 feet high and there are several rings of fire and swinging pendulums between me and the hoop. Sort of sounds like a Bowser’s Castle type of level.

Where I stand now, 10/310. 10 times accepted. 300 times turned down, 289 of those times the straight-nope, 11 of those times were bronze and silver medals. And I got 33 things pending… and more I will soon be sending out. When I got turned down for the 300th time, I was thinking, “Ouch. 300 times?” But then I remembered I had 33 things pending. And I remembered that 300 rejections just means I’m trying like crazy. That’s great. That’s the only way I will succeed.

So, it’s really a reminder that I am taking the necessary steps to get to where I want to get to. To achieve the success that I want. There’s a lot of things that go into it. 300 rejections. That’s a reminder that I’m doing at least one of those things.