My short stories have been repeatedly rejected. The positive side is that my rejection letters are personalized, some even have advice. The negative side is that I want to kill myself more and more every time.
How do you cope with rejection from literary mags? Do you write back and ask "why?" Do you revise the story and resubmit? Discard the story? Walk into traffic? Join the Peace Corps?
Plz discuss
I brush it off and move on because I'm an adult.
Post a sample
>The first thing the baby did wrong was to tear pages out of her books. So we made a rule that each time she tore a page out of a book she had to stay alone in her room for four hours, behind the closed door. She was tearing out about a page a day, in the beginning, and the rule worked fairly well, although the crying and screaming from behind the closed door were unnerving. We reasoned that that was the price you had to pay, or part of the price you had to pay. But then as her grip improved she got to tearing out two pages at a time, which meant eight hours alone in her room, behind the closed door, which just doubled the annoyance for everybody. But she wouldn't quit doing it. And then as time went on we began getting days when she tore out three or four pages, which put her alone in her room for as much as sixteen hours at a stretch, interfering with normal feeding and worrying my wife. But I felt that if you made a rule you had to stick to it, had to be consistent, otherwise they get the wrong idea. She was about fourteen months old or fifteen months old at that point. Often, of course, she'd go to sleep, after an hour or so of yelling, that was a mercy. Her room was very nice, with a nice wooden rocking horse and practically a hundred dolls and stuffed animals. Lots of things to do in that room if you used your time wisely, puzzles and things. Unfortunately sometimes when we opened the door we'd find that she'd torn more pages out of more books while she was inside, and these pages had to be added to the total, in fairness.
>The baby's name was Born Dancin'. We gave the baby some of our wine, red, whites and blue, and spoke seriously to her. But it didn't do any good.
Decent concept but ugly prose
Not quite ugly but there needs to be at least a moment or two when we can recognize his artistry otherwise it's pointless to be writing.
Just to add, I don't call it ugly because the inevitable increase in hours progresses well enough from a narrative standpoint. Some might have fumbled that.
You're not Donald Barthelme.
Nah I just posted this to show that the pseuds on this board don't know good literature when it smacks them in the Face.
My creative writing teacher, who has been published, told me a very arbitrary but constructive estimation. And that is that it takes you reading 1000 good short stories and writing 100 genuine efforts at your own stories, and then you can hope to write something publishable in a respectable magazine. That’s just an opinion but it gives me a nice goal to chip away at and hold out hope for.
Submit to a shitton of places.
It fucking sucks.
>It's by Donald Barthelme, well-regarded postmodernist writer!
It still fucking sucks.
Not OP, how can I get my collection of short stories published? I've had poetry and several short pieces published in magazines and journals. Do I need an agent?
Can you tell me more about the process user? How many pages was your short story, where did you try to publish it, what were the reasons they rejected it, do they wanted to know your gender or race, did you meet them personally etc.? I'm really interested, please reply.
Get a girlfriend who likes your writing and all that is over. It will become suddenly clear to you that publicity doesn't matter. You'll realize, as I did, that you've wasted years trying to be validated by people to whom you mean nothing.
There's a whole, prestigious world of high culture among the learned class but is that what you want? Would you feel happy among people who place themselves above the kind of person you are now?
Sure thing. Can't believe I actually logged on again and found my shitpost bumped.
Anyway, the one I'm sending around is 12 pages. I made a submittable account and submitted to relevant places. I wrote a cover letter, provided a very brief background, thanked them for the consideration.
Most of their responses are form letters. Some of them are personalized, something like "while we all agree you're the next Faulkner, this piece does not fit the theme/aesthetic of our publication."
Every girl I date is disgusted at my childish hobby of creative writing. Even if they don't mean explicitly say so, the tone of the conversation drastically shifts once I mention I write.
I would kill for a literary girlfriend, I really would. Not even literary, but someone who supported my endeavors. It's just pragmatic pragmatic pragmatic. Work is good, art is for children, all your free time needs to be spent on me, etc. I'm having a lot of trouble dating right now tbqh. I'm starting to feel there's something very wrong with me as a person.
>You're the next Faulkner
>We still don't want you
Damn. 12 pages is really short, for some reason I thought short stories are like 20-50 pages or something. Maybe I'll look out for short story publicists too. I think writing short stories is very good practice, since you don't risk writing 100+ pages and realizing it's shit.
All good writers and scientists get rejected at first. Plenty of examples. Therefore, just keep going. If you truly believe you have the goods, other people will eventually notice. Just keep producing and pushing.
I think if you're someone like me with other time commitments (job, family, alcoholism), it's good to start small. I have a few things published already, some of which took me two days to write, two or three more to revise. Once I get published somewhere reputable, I'm going to make the jump and try to have a novel ready.
That said, it's been a real dry spell for me this fall and it's quite depression.
Oh, and fall is by far the best time to submt.
Thanks for the encouraging words user. Weirdly, it means a lot, and I will do just that.
You stop expecting to be Shakespeare now. You have your entire life to develop a craft. No progress is lost unless you give up. Write for twenty years, for the meticulous toil of artistic development, then try writing a serious endeavor. Stop throwing slop at magazines and expecting pity because you view it as the lowest, thus most accepting, medium. Your entitlement will send you crashing into the sea.
But Rimbaud was famous at 21.
>I think if you're someone like me with other time commitments
I'm a fucking NEET, so I got time, but my motivation is always really low for anything. But a dozen or so pages might be in and maybe I'll even like it and get motivated.
>I have a few things published already
I think this must feel great, user. Did you get a lot of praise by the publisher, maybe you can hook up again?
It's not about being Shakespeare, it is about having a source of income through writing so I can spend my time doing that, as opposed to slaving away through a 9-5. Publication, even in magazines, is a reasonable starting point.
Not OP, but knowing how fucked up I am, I can see myself devoting to writing for 40 years and still don't be shit.
It feels sort of great. A part of me is validated, another part is crushed by the crumbling expectations I set from publication.
That said, I get far quicker response times when my cover letter mentions I've been previously published.
And yeah, if motivation is the issue, there are ways around that. For example, one of my most popular stories was written after A day sitting in a coffee shop on all sorts of anphetamines, caffeine, nicotine. I just wouldn't leave until I had something, anything. Then I revised it here and there. Looking back it's my best piece ever. So just do drugs or drink coffee and don't be afraid to cheat the system a bit. Writing doesn't have to be all romantic, in some log cabin with candles and Chopin playing in the background. It can be rather gross or unorthodox or whatever. That really helped my motivation issues. 8-12 pages is super manageable.
Also, I believe in you.
Yes. Do you want to be rejected without so much as a glance? Go without one. Do you want to become a joke, and damage your chances of later traditional publishing because you can't accept that the reason your work isn't being published is because it isn't good, and instead think the kikes/women/blacks/sjws did it? Self-publish.
Be patient. It takes a long time to publish work, especially early on. Keep records of how each magazibe replies. The ones who just send you a form letter are probably worth forgetting about unless they're a huge name. I put a number on how many rejections I'll let a piece get for a serious rewrite or just scrapping it. Early on it was 100 because I was doing a lot of learning about what mags were even interested in my work. I never hit that number before getting accepted, but I used to get closer than I do now.
I also divide what mags I send to into tiers, and only send them on tier at a time. Tier one being the giants that I know still read their slush piles (so no Paris Review or The New Yorker etc.). Once all of those reject me, move down.
What magazines are you submitting to?
Stop submitting things anywhere near when they're completed. Finish something, lock it up and start your next project. Finish that, then do the same. Repeat this process until years have gone by, then go back over your work from a half decade or so prior, and if you still like the piece, THEN submit it.
Thanks for the advice user.
I'm submitting to more mid-tier, though also to the New Yorker and PR. Right now I'm mostly trying for the Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Electric Literature, and a few others.
Do you have any recommendations for mags?
The only thing that is wrong with you is that you waste your time and effort on women who don't support you. Those women are for throat fucking and discarding.
This
The New Yorker and The Paris Review don't take anybody from slush anymore, so don't get heartbroken over their rejections. The others are solid mid-tier choices.
Honestly, the best advice I have is just read litmags like crazy. Don't fear online publications, they're the future of the medium, plus a pub in a small time online mag means you can still get eyes on your work whereas one in a small print mag available in 12 bookstores in the US will lead to a lot less publicity.
Building your name will involve being unpaid, which you may already know. Do not pay to submit though. Submission fees are a scam, contests are also a scam if they charge more than a pittance to enter. If you have to pay to play but they don't pay their contributors, know the editors are lining their pockets, even if they say it's for website upkeep. Some of it really is, but it takes astonishingly few paid submissions to cover that.
If you're doing difficult and experimental (and I mean genuinely so, not the soft "experimental" that McSweeny's etc. likes) you may have to go more niche. Poets and Writers has a good lit mag search engine. Duotrope can be a handy tool as well, but isn't free.
Same here. I work for 12 hours a day, so it gets depressing. After writing for years, I've sent out my first two stories recently, and they're bound to be rejected. What's fun is that I'm not writing in English and there's basically no hope to make a living at this here, but am at a point where I would like just some recognition, even if it's extremely small, just to keep me going and feel validated. I'm working on another story right now that I need to send out tomorrow before midnight (magazine deadline). It's a dumb borderline automatic writing story that looks like the excerpt posted higher by user. I think I'm writing terribly and putting nonsensical things in on purpose just to be less crushed if it's rejected, "jokes on you, I was only pretending to be retarded". Oh well.
>I work for 12 hours a day, so it gets depressing. After writing for years, I've sent out my first two stories recently, and they're bound to be rejected.
Fuck, is this how it works? I've never written before and just thought I try my luck on short stories, because I think they're good practice. Should I even bother with publishing magazines if I haven't written for like a decade already?
That's a tough one. Think of it this way: if your first book is a book of short stories, would you be proud to have that piece in it? If the answer is yes, why wait to try to publish it? If the answer is no, don't waste your time and others time, and keep them as just practice.
If you submit to zines, you might get some feedback if rejected.
Neither do you, because Barthelme is not good lit
Some are even shorter, there are short stories with
K
Try with a different story once you have exhausted the worthwhile publications.
Rinse.
Repeat.
DESU as a reader, I wasn't grabbed by the sample you posted at all. This was kind of a wtf for me in all honesty and not in a good way. But somebody else might love it, so submit widely.
You have a very straightforward way of telling a story. Maybe you should try writing screenplays. This type of writing is extremely important when you're creating/describing a scene.