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There’s a special reason I’m sharing this one right now. Last week, I was in the unfortunate but necessary position of needing to send some form rejections to some tender writers. Most took their lumps quietly (which is the correct way to handle a form rejection.) But a few reached out to ask what they could do to improve their work. Enter: the story of this submission. (Side note: If you ever receive a form rejection on a submission and you simply will, do not respond to the editor to ask for feedback or why it was rejected. It’s poor etiquette, and you won’t be satisfied with the answer anyway, if you even happen to get one.) “What Comes Tomorrow” is what I like to call a “deep Texas” story, which means there’s a rural Texas setting, a rural Texas voice, and a rural Texas problem to be solved, which also means that probably no one else is going to care about the story as much as another person from rural Texas will. I love my “deep Texas” stories. But dang, are they hard to place in journals. This piece took especially long to place and holds the current record for rejections received before being accepted without rewrites. Here are the details: Total time spent on submission: 476 days. Yep— 1 year, 3 months, 21 days. Response time from South 85 Journal: 118 days.
Total rejections received before an acceptance: 62. 6 were truly personalized rejections, 5 were “higher-tier form rejects” meaning not quite a form rejection but also not personalized. The rest were form rejections.
Pay: Zilch. But I was honestly so glad someone finally loved the story enough to give it a home, I did not care. They did invite me to read at AWP 2020 but… you guessed it. Thanks COVID! In the end, I’m pleased with the story and pleased with where it landed. No, I did not consider edits during all those rejections because 1) I know deep Texas stories are hard to place, and 2) the personalized rejections made it clear it was a matter of fit, rather than craft. It’s important to know the difference.
Read it here.
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