By Melissa Witcher
With over 100 literary magazine rejections in the past two years, I am quite familiar with being not quite the right fit. I’ve always been a misfit so it makes sense that my writing career would follow suit.
Many famous people, quite successful, have written about rejection in poetic and useful ways. I’ve done my best to read what they have to say. I was eager to aim for 100 rejections a year and bought into Amy Grace Loyd’s take on the joy of rejection. This despite the fact that I’ve spent most of my life avoiding rejection. Truly. I only dated people who asked me out, only took jobs that were guaranteed, and quit difficult things (before those things quit me). Even after I started writing, in 2014, I rarely considered publishing. It was only at the beginning of 2023, when I took a class on establishing a writing and submission routine, that I started seriously submitting my work to literary magazines.
By the end of 2023, I had accumulated thirty-three rejections and four acceptances of five pieces.
I was shocked to receive my first rejections, despite being fully warned that it would happen. Perhaps it’s inevitable to think we’re special, the one who will finally escape the cold shoulder of rejection. I hated it but soon got busy seeking more words of wisdom. It was either that or quit and I’d already done that enough.
What I gathered from the collective literary wisdom was that we (meaning I) shouldn’t give up and we (also me) should read, revise, learn, connect, create systems, and get better, better, better!
So I did. I carefully evaluated the magazines I applied to—their content and general acceptance rates. I dutifully joined Duotrope and spent hundreds (that I didn’t have) on feedback from lit mags (some cruel and arrogant, some culturally insensitive, some incredibly insightful) and from individual editors. Eventually, I became a patreon of Pencilhouse for the feedback and spent the cash to become a member of the Chillsubs Submitter’s Club, which every month provides a list of ten literary magazines that, in theory, are a good fit for a specific story. I became a volunteer reader for Atticus Review, then Cosmic Daffodil Journal, two very different journals, because I wanted to understand the diversity of publication practices among literary magazines. Now, I’m at CRAFT, where two months after becoming a reader, I volunteered to be an editorial assistant, despite imposter syndrome, to give back and become a better writer. I’ve read fifty books since 2023 and have enjoyed the wit and wisdom and challenge of Anne Lamott, Stephen King, and Matthew Salesses, among others.
None of it made a difference.
My 2024 year total was sixty-seven rejections and four acceptances. I was rejected across the board, by lit mags who reject just about everyone (Smokelong Quarterly, Chestnut Review, X-R-A-Y, The Penn Review, etc.), those who reject some (The Dodge, The MacGuffin, The Spotlong Review, Bright Flash Literary, etc.) and those who barely reject anyone (Libre).
Beyond that, I’ve never received a personalized rejection letter. I’ve never won a contest or been shortlisted.
My 2023 + 2024 numbers combined give me about an 8% publication success rate. Someone told me that a good writer should have a 20% publication rate.
At this point you may believe that the problem is me. I often think so: I’m a no-good writer who started way too late with not enough skills. There’s no hope for me.
But on my less bleak days, I think perhaps that most advice about dealing with rejection is like advice about dating—what works for one is not a universal truth.
Now that I’m much more familiar with a chorus of no’s, here’s what I think:
First, let’s normalize rejection. It happens, a ton (not just to me). Ellen Bass said in an interview with Lunch Ticket (a lit mag I’ve been rejected by) that, “I think you need a lot of patience for many efforts and much failure”. There are no numbers that prove you are a good writer and for most of us there is the guarantee that we will experience rejection.
Second, let’s stop talking about using rejection to get better. Just like we don’t have to be our best, most perfect, most evolved version to be worthy of a mate (tons of screwed up people find partners all the time; I did!), the same is true of publishing. I read a lot of lit mags and not all the stories published are great (tho many are). There are many factors that constitute a lit mag rejection (just like in dating).
Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder of a dating app, not a literary magazine denizen, has said that “rejection is redirection.” I prefer that. Rejection has been key to me expanding my skills as a writer, not because rejection is proof the work isn’t good enough, but rather because I keep choosing to stick to it and that requires revisiting the work. Three of the four pieces I published in 2024 were revised more times than I can count but I didn’t think of myself as getting “better”; I didn’t have the flu. I expanded and developed my skills, and continue to, but I’m good enough as is, thank you very much.
Third, let’s acknowledge that only you know the real benefit of rejection. There is no one answer that fits all. For me, trying to publish what I write is a reciprocal experience. It requires my (metaphorical) blood, sweat, and tears and in return I am given the chance to practice dedication, perseverance, and passion. I regularly feel like a failure (over a hundred times!) and just as regularly I ask myself if I believe in myself in the absence of external validation. One hundred times I’ve said yes. That’s the value of rejection to me—who I am in the face of it. Art is arbitrary, subjective, sometimes cruel and always weird, and me believing in myself is what makes it worth it.
I am not wise and I don’t have the credentials to be dispensing advice, but if you’re intimate with rejection like me, know that you’re not alone and you’re allowed to make what you want of rejection because as long as you get something out of it, that’s all that matters.
Bio: Melissa Witcher (she/ela) is a self-taught writer and artist. She was born in Brazil, raised in the U.S. and has lived in São Paulo since 2011. Her rejections far outnumber her acceptances but her writing can be found in the wild & wonderful literary hinterlands. She is a volunteer reader at CRAFT.
