100 Writing Rejections Update: It’s Working! And How You Can Do It, Too.

At the end of 2018, I shared my goal of getting 100 writing rejections this year.

It’s been three full months of actively submitting pitches and stories, and I have some exciting news to share…

It’s working!

In the process of accumulating rejections, I’ve also received two acceptances. One for an essay I pitched and another for a short story!

If you’re curious about the numbers, here’s how it broke down for the short story:

33 submissions = 11 rejections, 1 acceptance with the rest still pending at the time of acceptance.

The essay was a little different. I saw a call for submissions in a Facebook group for writing jobs, sent in a pitch, and had the piece accepted and commissioned.

While I’m thrilled to share these wins with you, I think it’s more helpful if I give you some actionable tips you can implement in your own writing life.

Here’s how I planned out and started to execute my goal of getting 100 writing rejections this year, as well as my next steps as we head into the second quarter of the year.

Give Yourself Lead Time

I decided on this goal in the fall and knew I’d edit and polish a short story in preparation for submitting it starting January 1st.

That lead time was important because it gave me a few months to get organized, revise the story I wanted to publish, and come up with a game plan for myself.

There’s no harm in starting your own 100 rejections project today if you’ve just decided to do it, but I can vouch for the peace of mind that comes with having a little bit of time to get organized and prepare.

On that note…

Get Organized

To get 100 rejections, you’ll need to submit your work to a lot of places, and because of that, I recommend keeping track of each submission.

I use two systems for tracking: one is the submission site Submittable and the other is a private spreadsheet.

The reason I use two systems is that some journals, oddly enough, don’t accept submissions through Submittable. To be honest, of the 33 submissions I made from January through March, only ONE wasn’t via Submittable, so the vast majority do seem to utilize this service.

The one journal that didn’t use Submittable was Ploughshares, though, and I really wanted to submit to them even though they use their own submission platform (which, honestly, I found quite cumbersome and unintuitive).

My suggestion is to use Submittable when possible, but also track every single submission in a separate format that works for you.

Here’s a snapshot of what my spreadsheet looks like:

I knew that I wanted to tally my submissions, track the date of each one, the method for submitting, the journal name, the story title, the outcome, and of course, payment in or out.

You may have other data points that are important for you to track, but this is what has worked for me. 

You’ll notice I also have links for two articles at the top. One is a VERY comprehensive list of literary journals and if they pay, and the other is a list of submission strategies. I like having those handy.

Something else to consider before you start submitting is where you’ll send your work.

I spent a few weeks researching many of the journals in that Erika Rouse list I mentioned, reading submission policies, organizing journals by open reading periods, and figuring out which ones were going to cost me a reading fee or not.

(The whole reading fee thing is a rant I’ll save for another day, but keep it in mind. READING FEES ADD UP.)

Many literary journals have open and closed reading periods, which means there are whole chunks of the year where you may not be able to submit to a journal you really like.

Planning ahead will give you a chance to see which journals are accepting submissions and when. Then you can be strategic about what you submit and how much you’re spending on fees.

One final thing to consider before you start is, on average, how many submissions you’ll need to make on a monthly basis to hit 100 rejections.

I wanted to submit my work about 8-9 times per month, if not more. Having this target number in mind made it easy to plan the time each month to send out my work and gave me a concrete goal to hit on a short-term basis, too.

Be Strategic When Submitting Your Work

For me, being strategic meant submitting my story to a mix of both higher-prestige/higher-readership journals as well as smaller ones that still had clout.

It also meant making sure I wasn’t submitting to more than a handful of journals each month that required reading fees.

After my story was accepted, I had to go through all of my pending submissions and withdraw my story from consideration.

The painful part is, you don’t get your reading fee back if your story is accepted somewhere while out on simultaneous submission, so it’s wise to not over-submit to journals with fees.

Even if they haven’t read your story yet, you still lose the money for that submission.

Work On Something Else!

This piece of advice has completely changed my writing life over the last year. And it’s such a simple and obvious one at that!

When you’re in the process of finding a home for your work, whether you’re looking for an agent, submitting a short story or poem, trying to pitch an essay, or literally anything else…

Work. On. Something. Else.

Once you’ve deemed a piece of work complete and ready for the world, send it out and turn your attention elsewhere. Continue generating new work while your current work is out there looking for a home.

Don’t be a helicopter parent. Don’t hover, don’t revise endlessly, don’t tinker with it until each punctuation mark is just right.

Let it go and work on something else. You might be astounded to realize how little attachment you feel to the piece you’re submitting if you’re working on something new.

Know When To Fold

Decide early on how much rejection you’ll allow for each piece you’re submitting. Sometimes it’s truly a numbers game, and the more times you submit, the more likely you are to be accepted.

Other times, there’s valuable feedback to gain from a high number of rejections on a single piece of work.

Decide what your personal threshold is and know when to pull a piece out of the rotation, either to revise it or retire it.

The good news is, if you’re working on new stuff, you should have more work to send out if you need to take something out of the running.

Don’t dwell on it if you have to do that – just start submitting your next piece and move on.

What I’m Doing Next

Cheers if you’re still with me on this epic blog post!

Here’s what I plan to do now that my short story has found its home:

• Finish the draft of the novel I’ve been writing for the last 9 months. I’m about 10,000 words from the end, so it should be wrapped up soon
• Start a couple of new short stories
• Revise an existing short story so it can be the next piece out on submission
• Pitch a few more essay ideas to the site that accepted my first pitch
• Celebrate when my pieces are in print!

Now, tell me… what are your writing goals for the next few months? Share in the comments! I’d love to hear what you’re working on.