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- Mar 22, 2003
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There are two stories that I've always loved on rejections. The first comes from Stephen King (who admittedly lived then in a very different era with way more publication opportunities for short fiction in magazines and newspapers.) When he was starting out, he got a large, long screw nail and hammered it into his bedroom wall. And when he got a rejection letter, he'd jam it on to the nail. His goal was to put as many letters on the nail as possible. In time, he had to switch to a railroad spike because the long nail didn't have enough room.
The other one was a writer who planned to wallpaper her bathroom in rejection letters. Apparently, she started to get some publications before having enough rejection letters to fill the bathroom, but as Carrie Vaughn's blog post points out, you can probably get enough if you submit enough to do some lovely art or home decor projects with them. Of course, a lot of these rejects are now emails, but you can print them out. This would allow you to pick a nice eco-friendly recycled paper in an attractive color to print them out on and use as the wallpaper.
And there is another option, which is to self-publish the stories or the longer, more novella-y ones and sell them cheaply online. There are some advantages to this, as long perhaps as you stick to the stories you did that you like the best. You can experiment, you can get direct audience market research about what you do that does and does not get a good response, and you don't have to worry about fitting a particular magazine's specialized audience. But I do think submitting to magazines and getting rejected is good practice for writing and life in general.
My suggestion is to remember the mantra: A rejection means not this story with this person on this day. And that's all it means. (Though if you do get any feedback that is useful to you, it doesn't hurt to improve things either.)
Every editor and agency reads everything submitted. An editor who asks for submissions and then doesn't read them would be an editor who needs help from mental health professionals.
The other one was a writer who planned to wallpaper her bathroom in rejection letters. Apparently, she started to get some publications before having enough rejection letters to fill the bathroom, but as Carrie Vaughn's blog post points out, you can probably get enough if you submit enough to do some lovely art or home decor projects with them. Of course, a lot of these rejects are now emails, but you can print them out. This would allow you to pick a nice eco-friendly recycled paper in an attractive color to print them out on and use as the wallpaper.
And there is another option, which is to self-publish the stories or the longer, more novella-y ones and sell them cheaply online. There are some advantages to this, as long perhaps as you stick to the stories you did that you like the best. You can experiment, you can get direct audience market research about what you do that does and does not get a good response, and you don't have to worry about fitting a particular magazine's specialized audience. But I do think submitting to magazines and getting rejected is good practice for writing and life in general.
My suggestion is to remember the mantra: A rejection means not this story with this person on this day. And that's all it means. (Though if you do get any feedback that is useful to you, it doesn't hurt to improve things either.)
JR said:
Every editor and agency reads everything submitted. An editor who asks for submissions and then doesn't read them would be an editor who needs help from mental health professionals.
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They turned me over in three days. The bums. 
