It’s already February, but I still wanted to update here with my submission statistics of 2023. I was discussing this with the husband that so often, we focus only on the wins, the successes, and it can leave a mistaken impression that there are no failures or rejections. This is patently untrue. Doing anything implies trying, and there is no trying without some form of failure. Of course, there is no success without trying either. So, in a way, there is no success without some failure, at some point. Every world champion loses at some point. Every successful person has had at least one setback in their life.
So, yes, I’ve had acceptances and some fun opportunities in 2023, but I’ve also had my share of rejections and setbacks, and I’m sure there will be many more to come. This is something that should be acknowledged and shared.
Check out my previous writing years in review: 2020 and 2021 (Do you think it’s too late to do one for 2022?)
(As a side note, I like to joke that I’m undefeated at the card game, Magic: the Gathering, but this is because I won the first game that I ever played and now refuse to play any more games for the rest of my life.)
Without further ado, here are my submissions statistics this year:
New pieces written: 9 (6 stories, 2 flash, 1 hybrid)
Total submissions: 94 (This includes story submissions, fellowship applications, and a couple of creative submissions. I think this also includes stories rolled over from 2022. I got lazy this year and didn’t differentiate between categories.)
Total decisions: 86
Acceptances: 7 (1 poem, 1 hybrid, 5 stories)
Rejections/Abandonments: 78 (15 positive)
Withdrew: 1
Acceptance % (acceptances/total decisions): 8.1%
Shortest decision: less than 24 hours (5 stories, some of those speculative fiction journals are FAST!)
Longest decision: 10 months (though 3 of my stories took 7 months to reach a decision)
A few takeaways:
- Abandonment: sometimes literary magazines just never get back to you. Some they go out of print without letting anyone know. Some journals never respond to queries. I have to then decide whether to keep waiting or just mark this submission as abandoned. I waited over two years for any word for one of my stories before just considering it abandoned this year. It happens. It sucks. It’s fine if the journal allows simultaneous submissions, but for those who don’t, it puts a writer in the terrible position as to whether risk it or to just have a story in purgatory forever. It’s not that hard. Just tell the writer whether their story is rejected or not. Use a text expander or email auto reply. A writer dedicates a lot of time researching journals, tweaking their submission to fit a journal’s guidelines, reading sample stories to determine whether a journal is a good fit for their story, and it can be disheartening when a journal can’t even send out a form letter.
- Don’t give up: One of the stories that was accepted in 2023 was written back in 2012. Through 3 revisions and 24 submissions, I submitted this story that was dear to my heart over and over, and 11 years later, it found its perfect place in a wonderful journal. So, don’t give up. It will happen. It may take way longer than expected, and it may take more work than expected, but it will happen.
- Positive rejection: You may think that positive rejections are still rejections, so what’s the big deal? I would agree with you, but I have learned to treasure these positive rejections as wayposts to show that I’m headed in the right direction. Whether it’s an editor who takes the extra time (that they definitely have very little of) to give me feedback on what works and doesn’t work in my story or whether it’s the knowledge that my story made it to the final round out of the hundreds (and even thousands!) of stories the journal received, I’ve started differentiating these rejections from the mass of generic form rejections that I receive.
- Just do it: I was able to complete a lot more lengthier stories than in previous years. In one of the short-lived writing groups I attended, I had shared with the group that I was really struggling with being in the middle of so many half-written projects. Someone replied to just focus on one at a time, which seems obvious, but for some reason, it clicked something in my mind. Just do it. Just write it. Don’t think about all the half-finished projects; just focus on one until the draft is done, even if the draft sucks.
Looking forward to 2024. Some great publications happening soon, plus I’m already on track for a possible 100 rejections this year already!