Literary Magazines Are Not Your Validation
"As failure can be a friend, validation can be an enemy."
Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.
During a writer’s career, we are sometimes forced to reckon with a word in a new way, from a new angle, a new attitudinal disposition. To reevaluate a word in a different context, even though, absurd as it sounds, we have written that word dozens of times.
For the purpose of this piece, I will ask the reader to consider the word submission.
What does it mean, what are we doing when we submit our work? To a literary magazine? To the public at large?
We may think of submission in two brief definitions.
The action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force.
The action of presenting a document for consideration or judgment.
Funny enough, these two definitions are both great descriptors of the literary submission process. The writer is submitting a document for consideration, but are they not also yielding to a superior force? Is the writer not yielding to the great authority that is the esteemed and highly sought after Literary Magazine? I would suggest that, in many cases, the writer is doing exactly that, but perhaps, blindly, needlessly.
In A Brief Portrait of Failure As A Friend, published here in Lit Mag News, I tried to relate my encounters with rejection and how those earlier experiences with failure fostered a kind of liberation within me. It became clear that rejection would always be a part of an artist’s life, whether you are a struggling poet with no name, or a best-selling author with dozens of awards. Nothing guarantees unanimous praise for your next work. Rejection will ride with you forever, so take from it what you can—treat it as a friend. Nothing is universally praised.
However, not all rejection is equal. And while it can be liberating, it can also be completely unnecessary. To see what I mean, I will relate to you a short story that happened a few days ago.
What does it mean, what are we doing when we submit our work? To a literary magazine? To the public at large?
Perusing a site of collected literary magazines, I stumbled across a particular publication that was calling for poetry and prose, as well as art and photography. Though not uncommon, this piqued my interest as a poet/painter combo, because I had never submitted my own visual work to a publication. Soon enough, I found myself scrolling through the sample visual work they had previously published. And while we can rattle on about how art is subjective, in the eye of the beholder, etc., something was made clear to me—visual work was simply not their strong suit.
The visual work they presented, as a body of published work, didn’t really work at all. Perhaps they need a little guidance, perhaps art was an afterthought. Perhaps they just see it differently. At any rate, drawing from my own experience, I was convinced that if I were to submit my work, my paintings would be rejected. The selected work they had previously published bore no indication of visual sophistication. There was little cohesion in direction or style. Whatever virtue they saw in their own published work would likely mutually exclude whatever virtue that could be found in mine.
In this case, submitting would be a two-fold mistake. Not only would my work be rejected, but it would be rejected from a source that has clearly demonstrated their visual vocabulary is not fully formed. That variety of rejection—insult to injury—is useless. I suppose, you could say, I rejected their magazine’s curation. It is neither here nor there, the point is to move on dispassionately. My work wouldn’t fit.
Whatever virtue they saw in their own published work would likely mutually exclude whatever virtue that could be found in mine.
In the late 90s, Chef Marco Pierre White bemused the culinary world when he gave back his Michelin Stars. He was the youngest awardee of the highest prize a restaurateur can attain. When asked why he would do such a thing, his response was “because when I realized they knew less about food than I did, the Michelin Stars meant nothing”.
Bob Dylan was famously awarded a Nobel Prize in literature, to which Leonard Cohen quipped “was like pinning a medal on Mount Everest.”
Stanley Kubrick has a grand total of one Oscar, for a lifetime of stunning, highly crafted filmmaking. But funny enough, we don’t need the Academy to tell us that Stanley Kubrick is great. Bob Dylan doesn’t need prizes to confirm the greatness of his life’s work, either. Marco Pierre White doesn’t need gold stars…
And while most artists will never attain the level of mastery and craftmanship of great historical icons, we should seek to, and we should also develop a robust understanding of our relationship with validation.
This word I invoke, validation, is when the submission process may turn sour. With some 5,000 literary magazines, it should be obvious that not all are equal—they simply cannot always know more than the writers they reject. The editors and publishers, human as they are, are chock full of interests, passions, biases, agendas, quotas, and other particular boxes to check; these considerations may bear little to no reflection on the quality of the work submitted.
What I am trying to relate is that the artist must be clear in their pursuit of publication and that clarity is a result of finding complimentary aesthetics, philosophies, ethos, etc., with a literary magazine. If the artist is searching for mere validation—finally, The New Yorker, finally AGNI, finally, The Paris Review!—then you put yourself and your work at undue risk.
Validation is a two-headed monster. When we need validation and fail to get it, our insecurities can turn to bitterness, even rage, and foster a deep uncertainty about our work’s path. Alternatively, one might find oneself too satisfied, too proud to continue; after all, you have reached the top, you are validated, there is nothing left to do. It sounds counterintuitive, because it is.
It was related to me, years back, the story of an artist who would not give up on the idea of having an exhibition at the city’s museum of art. For years he tried. He painted, was rejected. Until about a decade later, finally, he had his exhibition at the museum to great local reception—and he never painted another painting again. More than just a few have hung up their hats for good with the knowledge that they have reached the peak of external validation.
As failure can be a friend, validation can be an enemy. Rejection may force you to improve your writing, or alter your style. Acceptance and publication are often personal, emotional, victorious mile markers but should not be confused with leaps and bounds of quality.
I believe the artist must build an inner resolve. An instinct, a self-trust that is fortified through years of long-looking, long-reading, long stretches of self-evaluation. Once that constitution is formed, you not only liberate your voice and yourself, but can then submit with a stronger understanding of your offering, and a stronger understanding of whose company your work should share.
The question is not simply “is my work good enough?”, but rather, “where does my work belong?”. I believe that having a fierce and clear understanding of this concept is crucial to the submission process.
Hopefully, nothing I say here would dissuade any writer from becoming better. The writer should forever strive to improve in clarity and beauty. But, just as true, the artist would do themselves a favor to recognize the swine before offering their pearls. The validation of the artist and their relationship with the external world is a long road indeed, but is forever a two-way street. Once the artist has finely sharpened their own discernment, they can then begin to wield it like a sword.
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