Submitting to Rejection

Posted on by sereichert

Nobody likes being rejected. Yet one of the fundamental truths of life is that we will not be accepted by everyone, every time, and that includes our work. Admittedly, throughout nearly two decades of being a writer, I’ve been rejected more than I’ve been accepted. In recent years I’ve put aside submitting to pursue work with my publisher in the craft of novel writing, but I’ve come to realize that it’s stunted my growth as a writer.

The years I spent submitting weekly (mostly in an effort to gain experience and get some publication credits, as well as harden my tender, little writer heart against rejection) were the years when my writing grew the most. Submitting to whatever contests and journals I could meant I was always pushing outside of my comfort zone. Feminist horror? Sure, why not? SciFi Flash fiction? I can do that. Memoir? Creative nonfiction? Humor? Let’s try it out. Whatever was calling for a submission, I would fumble my way through it, and that led me to explore genres and forms I might not have otherwise attempted. I learned I do have a little dark streak that likes to come out and play.

I learned that a thread of justice and the unsettled walking of moral lines often shadowed my flash fiction. I wrote poetry about lawnmowers and tricycles. I threw paint at the wall in so many colors that my writing house became a mural of unexplored and emerging thought. All of it wouldn’t have happened if I had focused on a ‘rejection’ goal instead of an ‘acceptance’ goal.

Now, in a certain stage of stagnation, I’m returning again to a rejection goal for 2026. Not so lofty as 100 this year (I do have important things at home to still attend to and novels coming out) I am just aiming to submit once a week and garner 50 rejections in the year. I’m looking into playwriting contests, and speculative fiction, memoir and essay. I’ll probably revisit my favorite literary magazines and quirky publication to see what they’re up to. All of it, a practice that I hope you try too. A practice in being brave, in being curious, and in being untethered to the ideas of publication as success.

What can you learn about yourself as a writer? Not just what genres you might unknowingly enjoy, but also in sticking to a schedule, brushing up your cover letters, and learning how to concisely formulate a story (or poem) that feels like your voice and your soul. Knowing that you’ll be rejected. Knowing that not everything (maybe even none of it) will be published or given a place in the public sphere, can you reorganize you brain around the idea that it is the practice itself that’s the prize to be won?

That’s the goal for me. To rediscover the boundlessness of my creativity. To get uncomfortable. To learn things about myself and what the world looks like through my words. I hope you can find something similar that challenges you, humbles you, and eventually strengthens your love of writing.

Fear of Failure

Posted on by sereichert

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

I know that I’ve talked about failure before (mostly because I’m kind of an expert at it), but today I’m looking at the fear of it and how that can affect us, on not just an emotional side but the physical as well.

The human brain is wired for survival. Which means, its really good at flooding us with chemicals to help us outlive the tiger in the grass. It gives us a healthy fear of risk, so that we can live another day to make fire, hunt and gather, and make more big-browed babies. The problem is that some of the deep seated responses and reactions are no longer as useful in our present day. So often, our overstimulated brains are inundated with stress-response chemicals at every little infraction. Boss angry? Jerk cut you off in traffic? Partner says ‘we need to talk’? All of these things can cause an immediate fear response.

Sometimes it’s still helpful, but on the whole it shuts down our ‘thinking’ brain which is a much slower, more thoughtful contributor to our actions. What does it have to do with failure?

Let’s talk about the concept of ‘worst case scenario’. All the mom’s in the crowd know what I mean. You’re child is playing on the playground, but you’ve already mapped out every sharp edge, every eye-poking branch, and every potential bully. Because we’re wired to look for danger and to prepare ourselves for the worst things that can happen. Even if they never do.

Switch over to that manuscript, or poem, or article on your computer that you’ve been working and reworking, and fussing over for years. You have a genuine fear that if you let it out of your sight, it’s going to get poked in the eye with a sharp stick, or fall off of the faulty ladder and break every bone in it’s body. So you keep it safe, you keep it to yourself.

Can you imagine a kid that never, ever left home? That never stepped out, that never met anyone else? That wouldn’t be much of an existence and the world would miss out. Unlike your own child, your writing will not die if you expose it to some danger. In fact, it’s through this ‘danger’ that it will grow, learn, and become better.

So, when you’re trying to decide about submitting, or putting your work in a critique group, remember that its normal to feel apprehensive but that the point of using our voice, of writing what we love, is so that we can share it. And the worst case scenario is really that someone else doesn’t like it. Here’s a little insight-it doesn’t matter if they don’t. If they have good feedback that makes sense and would improve it, great–but don’t let the fear of not being instantaneously accepted keep you from trying. Every work is not for every body. But you won’t know which body it will speak to, if you never let it out.

So–go get ’em. Take that piece to a critique group, give it to a friend to read, submit it to a magazine. Just don’t let the fear keep it (and you) in a cave.

Opportunities, Potential, and Failure

Posted on by sereichert

I’m winging today’s post. It’s due tomorrow and I really didn’t have a direction to head (did I mention I lost my blog ‘plan’ for the year–there will be a lot of winging it in the next couple of months). So today, I wanted to talk about opportunity, our own potential, and reframing failure.

What do all of those things have to do with writing? So very much.

Whether you write for the love and fun of it, for yourself, for a small base of fans, for your dog, or for millions of avid readers, we are all engaged in a delicate balance of these three elements. Let’s take a look at them from a writerly perspective.

Opportunities

As a writer, or artist of any sort, when you decide to commit to your craft for whatever end result, you should look at ways to not just get those words in, but to improve them, challenge your writing’s boundaries, and explore different dimensions. Examples of creating and pursuing opportunities include:

  1. Submitting your work to journals, newsletters, publishers, or any other outside source for consideration.
  2. Signing up for classes, workshops, critique groups, retreats and conferences
  3. Writing outside of your genre or comfort zone as an exploration (you can do this concurrently with the two suggestions above)
  4. Sign up to give talks, open mic nights, teach a class (adult, young adult, children) about what you do know that would be helpful for other writers/artists.

The key to opportunity is to not limit yourself by your own doubt. You may see a dozen different submission calls, or invitations to teach or whatever, but if you’re constantly thinking your work won’t be good enough, your experience not deep enough, then you won’t ever put yourself out there. And the fact is, opportunities are rarely about stumbling into the ‘right place/right time’, they are usually more about putting yourself in the right place and the right time (creating and fostering the glints of opportunity you do find). So don’t limit your potential with self doubt. You never know what you’re capable of until you step up and try. That leads us to:

Potential

I’ll tell you the only real thing I know about human potential. It’s limitless.

Often times we are held back by our beliefs, our history, our trauma and our fears. Any thing ever in our life that told us we were not good enough, undeserving, or powerless, seeps in and builds little walls inside our brain. And we often think that once we reach those walls, that we are at the end of our capabilities. Reframing how you think about your potential is the key to opening up new roads. How do you reframe? Well, I guess first you have to set your sights on something without killing it.

How often do we tell ourselves, “I can’t do that”, “That’s impossible”, “That won’t work” even before we let ourselves think through the logistics? Probably a lot. Now–I’m not saying that EVERYTHING is possible. We can’t time travel (yet) and change mistakes from our past (why would you want to?). We can’t/shouldn’t aim for goals that hurt or destroy others. I’m saying in the field of your writing, you have no idea what you’re capable of.

So find out what drives you, what you want, what you dream of and write it all down (you’re a writer after all). Follow it up with small and manageable goals that move you forward, a little each day. This is the way we get over those walls. By building a ladder, one rung at a time, by destroying the wall, one brick at a time. Stay constant, stay consistent. And remember that self-doubt is an insult to your potential. If you want something, if you’re willing to work for it, then you deserve it and are capable of having it.

Well, that little pep talk was kind of exhausting let’s move on to my favorite of the three.

Failure

Failure! Fuck yes. Failure is my favorite and I’ll tell you why. Because failure means you were reaching for something better, something impossible, something unlikely and unsure. Failure means you stepped past your line of ‘acceptable risk’ and went rogue. Failure means you believed in something strongly enough to leap over that wall blocking your way. Failure is never a failure.

I’m already 102 submissions into my 100 rejections in a year challenge. Before I started this challenge, every rejection letter I got was a tiny little knife in the heart. A potential dream killer, a step closer to hanging up my pen and getting a real job. But you come to learn a few things:

  1. Failure is rarely fatal. (Ok–there is a disclaimer that you can totally fail something and end up killing yourself, so let’s not get into any discussions of Evil-Knievel stunts) Getting a rejection letter, even the worst and harshest one imaginable, will not kill you. But it may just teach you something.
  2. Failure teaches us. Failures aren’t setbacks as long as we learn something from them. Look I’ve had this kooky little story that I love, rejected like 40 times. Which tells me that even though I love it, there is something missing or needing cleaned up about it. I’m learning what makes a better story every time I write and send out a ‘less-good’ story. I learn that I can tweak and re-read and edit and cut out what doesn’t work. I learn to send it to the right markets. I learn to follow the submission guidelines. I learn that maybe my freak-flag is too much for some. Maybe it’s not enough for others.
  3. Repeated failure is a lesson book that you can take with you. In writing, especially, you learn what works and what does not. In life it is the same. And we gain these lessons and this experience from exploring and creating the opportunities for ourselves.

And just like that, I brought it full circle. Opportunity, Potential, Failure–rinse and repeat.

Go out there today and find or make an opportunity. Submit someplace new. Query an agent. Finish that novel. Get through that hard scene. None of these things need to be pretty or perfect. But they do need to get done.

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