Here’s an unfortunate truth about writing and publishing: the more you submit, pitch, apply, or otherwise send your work out into the world, the more rejections you’ll get. After years and years of writing and submitting, most rejections don’t shake me. They’re just the cost of doing business. But there are still moments when a rejection feels like someone else—an editor, an agent, an unseen grad student or volunteer lit mag reader plugging away in the slush pile—has seen the truth about you and decided they don’t want any part of it. But that’s not how this works. As essayist Rax King put it, rejection isn’t feedback.
The surest way to never get rejected, of course, is to keep everything you’re working on to yourself. But is that really what you want?
One thing I do to reassure myself when I’m in a moment where the rejections are piling up, or I’m working through one that really stung, is to remember all the writers I’ve admired who’ve had failed projects. Lauren Groff worked on a “profoundly failed” project between Florida and Matrix, and Victoria Chang wrote Barbie Chang in part by incorporating sections of a manuscript she’d put into her drawer into a manuscript Copper Canyon declined. (Copper Canyon took it on the second go-round, obviously, but I find enormous comfort in the fact that even Victoria Chang had at least one done but not quite complete manuscript tucked away.) Next week, we’ll have an interview with Chloe Benjamin, about the books that never quite made it into the world and what she learned from them.
This week, a revision challenge
Find a piece of writing that never quite came together. It might be something you submitted widely but couldn’t ever get accepted. Or maybe it’s something you liked the idea of but never really finished, or a piece you see differently after more time has passed. (Sometimes your baby really is ugly! But like I talked about last week with Grouchy Goat, there’s value in just refusing to quit.)
Rework it. Give it a new hook, or shake it into a new form. Experiment with the tone. Add something weird or surprising to it. Work on it for an hour or two. Then send it back out into the world.
book news!!!
My new book, Pocket Universe, is officially out in the world! If you can sneak away for half an hour or so of your week day, I'd love for you to join me this Thursday afternoon at 3pm eastern for a live virtual event sponsored by LSU. I'll read a couple poems, talk about how I wrote the book (big chunks of it scribbled in a notebook in the parking lot at daycare!), and maybe play a little snippet of the Doctor Who episode that inspired the title. You can find the info here.
My very talented friend Lindsay Lusby designed bookplates, and I’d love to send you one as a thank you! Just shoot me an email letting me know you'd like a book plate, and I'll pop it in the mail for you right away.
And if you haven't yet ordered, there's still time! You can order it from Bookshop, LSU, Amazon, or your favorite local bookstore. (And then email me requesting a bookplate, if you’d like.)
a few helpful resources
Emily Stoddard’s Voice and Vessel is an incredible resource for learning about writing contests, fellowships, and more. If you have a manuscript you’re ready to send out, the spreadsheet on her website is a great place to start.
Heather Havrilesky’s most recent newsletter, about believing your work and facing down self-promotion is full of too many great moments to excerpt it all, but here’s one:
Becoming a writer doesn’t mean that the whole world will love you unconditionally. If you write honestly and courageously, if you take risks, if you write from the heart, some readers will dislike you for doing exactly that. Other readers will misunderstand you. And some readers will see you clearly and accurately conclude that you’re the type of person they can’t fucking stand. Isn’t that true out in the world, too, whether you’re a writer or not? We humans are not here to be loved by all. Trying to be adored is a fool’s errand, one that will make you miserable and make your writing soggy and dull.
The goal is to write something you love. The goal is to keep doing that even when lots of people are saying STOP IT, YOU’RE THE WORST. It sounds demented, I know, to keep going under those conditions. That’s how it feels to be a writer. That’s also how it feels to be a human being. And when you finally learn to believe in who you are and what you have to offer, it’s the fucking best.
How is your writing going? What revisions are you working on? I’d love to hear from you. You can always reply to this email, comment below, or find me on twitter (@nancy_reddy) and instagram (@nancy.o.reddy).