New to Submitting to Lit Mags? Here's How to Make Sense of Rejections
A guide to processing rejections and productive submitting
Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.
By Chital Mehta
What can you expect after a submission?
The first thing that is likely to happen after submission to a literary magazine is that you will not hear from them for months. And when you finally do, you get a rejection. No matter how much you learn about rejection, nothing prepares you for that first sting. Eventually, you will develop a thick skin although it never seems easy. Even then, the hundredth rejection may also sting.
Understanding Rejections (standard, tier 1, highest tier responses)
Once you begin to understand the kind of rejections that you get, it becomes slightly easier to know how a literary magazine is responding to you. Each time you get a rejection, try to read it and dissect if their rejection is standard. Sometimes, a magazine may also mention that they would like to see more work from you. This is a wonderful opportunity to send more work because there are greater chances that the magazine publishes the kind of stories that you write.
Rejectionwiki can show what kind of response you have received from a literary magazine. This will further help you analyze the rejection letter and prepare you for future submissions.
What do magazines mean when they like your piece but can’t publish it?
Literary magazines do have good reasons to reject a story. When they like something, they will do everything they can to have the story in their magazine. But it is also possible that they do like a particular story but may only have space for three or more in each issue. Or it is also possible that they recently published a story similar to yours. Another thing that is possible is that a story sometimes needs approval from everybody in the team and if that doesn’t happen, even good stories can face rejection. When you get personalized feedback from a literary magazine where they specify that they loved your work but will not run it in their magazine, it is a good reason to keep going and submitting to other places. There are greater chances of it being picked up elsewhere.
How to proceed after you get a rejection?
Although it may feel defeating to see a rejection pop into your inbox, it is also an opportunity to do several things apart from brooding over the fact that your favorite publication just doesn’t want you in their magazine. This is an important step because here lies the opportunity for you to either throw away the story or pick it up and send it to another place or look at the story with fresh eyes. Here are some things that you can do after you get a rejection. Once you put this into practice, you won’t be spending too much time nursing the sting that comes from rejections.
1. Send it to more places. If you sent only to three places and someone sent a rejection, it’s too early to conclude the fate of your story. Send it to ten or more places in batches.
2. Send it to a friend for feedback. This is absolutely helpful and is a good idea to have a friend look at the story even before submitting. But it’s never too late for feedback. So, now is the time to send it to your friend if they have never read it before. You will be surprised how small comments can shape your piece into a stronger story.
3. Listen to writers who talk about rejection. It’s human nature to look for people who are in the same boat. Listening to podcasts and reading interviews and articles where writers talk about rejection is a great way to find strength and comfort in overcoming rejections.
It is a good practice to maintain a tracker where you note down the names of the places where you send your work. When you get a rejection, try to send it again to a few more places. Remember, this is a game of numbers. The more you submit, the more chances of acceptance.
Why do magazines reject submissions?
The list of possible reasons a magazine may reject a piece:
1. The story falls flat which means that it needs revision. Not all literary magazines have the time to reach out to the writer and give detailed feedback.
2. They published a similar story. Because literary magazines focus on publishing varied work, they never want to publish similar stories in the same issue.
3. They do not publish the kind of story you sent them. This happens often if you send your work without reading even a single issue of the literary magazine. Take the time to read their work. It’s laborious but you will save time on receiving form rejections.
4. Your opening isn’t strong enough to grab attention. Literary magazines read hundreds of submissions in a week. They only have to pick two or three for an issue. In that case, your opening needs to be strong enough for a reader to keep reading.
5. You did not follow the submission guidelines. This is a common cause for landing a rejection slip. Again, this is time-consuming but essential to qualify for being considered.
How to set goals for yourself based on rejections
Because the process right until submission remains in your control, it is a good idea to focus on how to improve or increase the number of submissions by paying attention to the submission window and type of literary magazines. It is also a good idea to spend some time reading a few stories to get a sense of their taste. Usually, most magazines have a few pieces available to read for free. Be sure to follow these magazines on Twitter. They post their submission window with deadlines that will help you plan your submission.
Below are some resources that post lit mag opportunities according to when they’re open for submissions.
Submittable’s Discover tab has deadlines posted.
Remember: rejections are the little bridges toward acceptance
A rejection hurts not because someone out there declined to publish your work but because inside your head, when you make a submission, you are being hopeful of being published in the magazine. When that doesn’t happen, you may feel disappointed and angry. All these feelings are normal. It is a good idea to have writer friends with whom you can connect and talk about how it feels. Many sessions are specifically held to talk about rejections and ways to deal with them. Kim Liao in her article here says why you should aim for 100 rejections a year. This can be especially helpful to be distracted from yearning for that one acceptance.
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Good post! I agree with the points made, but with some exceptions. I don't think you can read the tealeaves of most rejections. We never know what is happening at a magazine. It's also very rare that you have the perfect submission for a particular journal--you can never know, no matter how many issues of it you read. I've had it happen on a few occasions where I have gotten so frustrated that I picked some work at random to send to magazines where I had a history of rejections. Lo and behold, some of the random picks were accepted. I have no idea what that means: maybe that I am lousy at second-guessing editors (I'll admit it), or maybe that the editors themselves don't know what they want in any systematic way, even though they will write wise paragraphs about their selection process. Regardless, the answer is to keep 40 or 50 submissions out at a time. I almost never submit to journals that don't allow simultaneous submissions, unless they have a track record of making a decision within a few days. (Yes, those exist. The Threepenny Review is one of them.) Finally, is there really any excuse in the world for a magazine to hold on to a submission for over a year? And, to charge you $3+ for the privilege? I don't think so. I keep a mental list of those and don't repeat the experience.
Good stuff. The hardest part of submitting (to me) is not the rejections, but the long wait times. Checking Submittable every day, month after month, is a little like Chinese water torture.