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Oy, y’all. This is the question I get asked more often than not. Here’s the thing that I try to impress on writers new to the industry as much as possible—rejections are not personal. It is a numbers game, more than anything else. Think about this: you have about 1,000 literary journals out there taking in thousands of submissions and about about 1-3% of those submissions are going to get accepted simply because of space on the page and editor time/journal funding. So when someone asks me if it’s time to give up on a piece, the first thing I ask is: How many times have you submitted it? If the answer is less than ten or even twenty, you need to give the piece more chances. As long as you’re following submission guidelines and sending your best possible work, chances are your piece just needs to hit with the right editor. And there are all kinds of subjective issues at play — maybe they just accepted another piece on the same subject as yours, maybe it doesn’t fit the theme they happened to decide for the journal, etc. These are things outside of your control. Look again at the numbers of the submission above. Six months! Twenty-three rejections! But I know you. You need a cold, hard answer. Here’s a rule of thumb: If your piece has received more than ten form rejections with no higher tier or personal rejections in the mix (here’s an explainer on that), your piece may need more editing. If you have received a mix of form, higher-tier, and personalized rejections, you just need to find the right editor. Keep going. If you still don’t find a home after twenty or more rejections and several months on submission, look back at the work and see if you don’t see some potential edits. Time tends to reveal the whoopsies.
Anyway, here’s a Writers Ask piece I wrote about how long it took for me to get my agent for my book. (Three years, three full revisions with one completely failed attempt, and plenty of blood, sweat, and tears.) ____________________________________________________________________ (Do you have a writing question? Email me at lisa@allthingswords.com and I may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.)
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