Rejection Doesn't Have to Hurt

"Submit, submit, and submit some more..."

Welcome to our weekly column offering perspectives on lit mag publishing, with contributions from readers, writers and editors around the world.

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I started my writing career before there was an Internet for writers, so sending out an essay or story involved consulting Writer’s Market or some other guide; either subscribing to journals or checking them out at a local bookstore; typing labels, buying stamps for the manila envelope and the SASE included with my submission; and getting to the post office if I was paranoid about making sure my work got where it was going.

It was all extremely labor-intensive and I had to create charts that tracked what was where and how long it had been out. The whole process felt overwhelming at times because I was also a graduate student. I thought, however, that the results would be great because I had won a writing contest judged by a famous editor and had sold that story to Redbook which at the time had over four million readers. I made what would be $7,000 in today’s money—a lot of cash for a lowly grad student.

But that success was followed by five years of rejections—even from Redbook—and so at times the process felt futile. I even contemplated giving up writing entirely and perhaps becoming a therapist or a rabbi. 

What eventually turned the tide? Distance and introspection. Away from New York and its toxic ideas of success, I asked myself a simple question: who might be my audience, given that I was writing so much about children of Holocaust survivors? The answer was obvious and should have hit me sooner: Jewish readers. As if by magic, once I started sending these Jewish-themed stories to Jewish magazines and newspapers, I was back on the publishing track and making money at it too.

If you’re unsure about who your own audience might be, you first have to start with recognizing what your themes and subjects are. For example, when I started writing essays about chronic migraines a few years ago, I assumed that lit mags publishing for people who were disabled in one way or another might be the right choice. It was.

Ask yourself what you’re writing about and who might appreciate it most. Are you coping with writer’s block? Are you struggling with a move from city to country? Do you want to write about family dynamics? Whatever your focus—and it can change—you can use category searches on Submittable and Duotrope and you can also use Google for “lit mags about _____.”  Vary your search terms and keep looking.  Subscribe to the Authors Publish Magazine and/or Sub Club for newsletters of regular publishing possibilities and frequent lists of lit mags with specific theme issues.

Once I had a clear sense of my audience, I was steadily publishing a handful of stories a year. But a novelist friend asked me point blank after a few years: “Why are you spending so much time and money on short work?  Write books—that’s where the money is and that's how you'll really get known.” He was right enough and I did switch gears after quitting a teaching job so that I could actually finish a book in more time than summers off gave me. I did still occasionally publish essays and short stories (sometimes by request from an editor), but my focus changed to books. I went on to publish 27 books in crime fiction, psychology, horror, essay collections, memoir, travel, self-help and more. And my audience broadened and diversified as I extended my range into all those different genres.

Despite exploring various themes, in the 1980s and early 1990s I became best known as an American pioneer in writing fiction about children of Holocaust survivors. I would eventually see my work written about my professors in conference papers, academic journals, and books. It was almost as cool as seeing my work appear on university syllabi—and I think all of that led to Michigan State University purchasing my literary papers for the Special Archives at their Library.

I was fortunate enough to be well-reviewed—even in the New York Times Book Review—and had many book tours across the U.S., and was invited to prime gigs like The Library of Congress and a conference at Oxford University. With one of my books, I actually toured on and off for five years since interest in it was so high. It’s a memoir about the role of Germany, real and imagined, in my life as a Jewish writer.

The main thing I learned from being accepted by publishers is that a book and its author are commodities that need to be sold, and the author has to work hard to sell both. You need to push aside any embarrassment and pull up your cyber sleeves.  Whether large legacy publisher or boutique publisher, they all encourage hard work on the author’s part to reach out in every possible way—now more than ever when publishers and agents expect you to have marketing plans. In my case, when it came to PR, it was contacting Jewish Studies programs, German Studies programs, and Creative Writing programs. 

Do not send out form queries in any PR campaign. Carefully research every person you are writing to, find out what their specialties are if they’re academics, where they studied, what they teach, and tailor your email to hit a chord with that person.  Example: if I found out that someone had studied at a German university and I had spoken there or just visited the city, I mentioned it. The connection doesn’t have to be intimate, but you need some kind of hook. You also need to be able to write a short explanation of your book that’s in effect a sales pitch. All this takes time, but it can pay off more than you might think.

After the pandemic crashed into our lives, it took me months to readjust to not travelling anywhere further away than local supermarkets, not seeing friends or family in person, and even keeping clear of neighbors walking their dogs. My spouse has a heart condition so we were both extremely cautious.

I found myself losing interest in a novel I thought was the best thing I’d ever written, even though it was more than half-finished. But my creative energy surprisingly didn't diminish: it boomed. Being secluded opened up many doors and I started writing personal essays of all kinds and all lengths, from micro to long-form. I wrote about health issues, my family, my former travels, even the history of my beard. I thought at first, in the summer of 2021, that it might be nice to see, say, half a dozen in print by year’s end. But success came more quickly than I expected. Despite dozens of rejections, many editors were very responsive.

To place my work, I did exactly what I had done as a book author and also what you’re supposed to do as a submitting writer: I studied the journal online, read the bios of the staff, and I also checked acceptance statistics for that journal on Duotrope, which is worth much more than the $50 a year subscription because it’s so fact-filled. I use Submittable too to find magazines that are fee-free and have upcoming deadlines. I like its record-keeping of what you’ve sent where better than the Duotrope version because it’s simpler.

The publications added up, but they were of course outnumbered by the rejections. One essay was rejected close to two dozen times, with rejections ranging from formula notes to those bordering on the smarmy, trying to make me feel better as if I needed to be talked off a ledge. But the golden moments outshone that dross when my essay (or short story) hit the right reader or editor at the right time and I would be online and even in print very quickly. The speed of everything in the process was both remarkable and salutary and also meant I could eliminate as much time as possible after a rejection before moving on.

Example: a new essay about the damage my fifth-grade teacher did to my self-esteem (though it has a happy ending), is currently out at ten different lit mags I’ve studied and admired. But I also have five draft submissions saved in Submittable’s Drafts page so that as soon as I get a rejection, I stop everything I’m doing—if possible—and submit that draft. And I mean soon. Sometimes I get it done in a few minutes and then go back to work or whatever else I was doing before the rejection hit my inbox. Yes, the rejection might disappoint me, but I don’t leave myself time to mope because it’s just not worth the time.

Submittable makes submitting very simple before you’re ready to submit. After you’ve filled out a specific magazine’s requests for information about yourself including a letter and short bio, there are two tabs on the bottom of the final page: you either click Submit or Save. I think it's important to hit Save so that you can handle a rejection as quickly as you can open up the platform, go to Drafts and click the Submit button.

I also have three draft submissions of a much longer essay in that folder, ready to send as soon as the piece, currently out at six lit mags, returns from any one of them. I feel armored against the rejections I assume will come. Spreading your risk is essential to staying positive about the whole submission process.

I keep researching when the Drafts folder gets low so that I can go back to my book, my magazine, my life when someone inevitably says “No, thanks.” At times like that, I like to think of myself as MoveOn.Lev.

But now and then, resubmitting isn’t enough and that’s when I go to Plan B: I take my two Westies out for a walk because they don’t care about publishing at all. I re-read a favorite book or watch a favorite DVD, I go to the gym, I cook, call a friend to set up lunch, have a chat with my spouse who is retired and doesn’t worry about rejection. As writers, we have to remember that writing isn’t the entire universe and we need to care for ourselves and engage in the world in whatever ways feel appropriate without constantly worrying about success or even progress in our career.  Most of my local friends aren’t writers, and I’m glad of that because we rarely talk about publishing in any form—but we can talk about everything else.

I know that rejections can hurt, and sometimes hurt a lot, no matter how much you've published. But the best way to deal with that hurt is to be prepared to submit, submit, and submit some more. Rejection can sometimes help you focus your searches and focus your mind and get you where you want to be. They helped me find my first real audience and helped launch my career.

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