Forty-three rejection letters in a manila folder
Five years of submitting short fiction to magazines that mostly ignored me. The acceptance, when it came, was for the piece I almost didn't send.
The path, in milestones.
- 2019
The folder began
I kept every rejection in a folder labelled 'evidence'. Some were form letters. Two were handwritten. The handwritten ones I read on hard days.
Lesson: Rejections are receipts that prove you showed up. - 2022
Burning a draft
I had been polishing one story for three years. I deleted it. The fear of starting over for the eleventh time was smaller than the fear of being the writer who only had one story.
Lesson: Sometimes the brave act is to stop revising and write something new. - 2023
The email at 6:14 PM
Accepted by a quarterly I had read since university. Three hundred pounds and a contributor copy. I told nobody for a week, just to keep it mine.
Lesson: Let yourself believe a good thing in private before you announce it.
Read every rejection as a verdict on me
Lesson: Editors reject pieces, not people. The distinction keeps you writing.
Stephen King
Author of Carrie, The Shining, IT, and 70+ novels
Open journeyMaster Storytellers
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