Welcome to my annual blog post about rejection—I mean my annual blog post in which I tell you how many writing submissions I made in the previous year and then tell you how many times literary magazines said YES and how many times they said NO WAY.
(Your job is to say BOO to all the rejections.)
This was an epic year for literary submissions in that I tried really hard to submit many pieces to lit journals and magazines. If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that I aim for 100 rejections every year not because I am a masochist but because I’m a writer (is that the same thing?), and a writer’s life is filled with rejection after rejection (unless you are/were Joan Didion—which sadly, I am not). I figure if I get 100 rejections, I’m more likely to get 10 acceptances, give or take, just by sheer odds. And every writer wants 10 acceptances.
But first, let’s do the annual roundup of past years because who doesn’t like to be reminded of all the rejections? (I am a writer, after all; therefore, I am brave.)
In 2020, I received 88 rejections and 2 acceptances. Okay, okay, this isn’t sounding like a good start, but let’s move on.
In 2021, I received 174 rejections and 30 acceptances. Phew. Better odds.
In 2022, I received 43 rejections and 3 acceptances. Eek.
In 2023, I received 34 rejections and 10 acceptances. Not bad, despite the fact that I really didn’t submit much.
Now for the breaking news (someone call Gayle King for this!): Okay, hang on. Before I tell you how many rejections and acceptances I got, please keep in mind I submitted a TON in 2024. More than I ever have. So let’s remember this when I tell you that in 2024 . . . I received 125 rejections.
Are you booing at all those literary magazines who didn’t know that my writing is PULITZER-PRIZE WORTHY?
I knew you would. Thank you.
But on to the good news: I also got 13 acceptances. WOO HOO!! And one of those acceptances was from a magazine (Rattle) that I have been trying to get a piece published in for literally years and years. Yes, you can applaud. Yes, I am taking a bow for that one. And yes, I used the word “literally” correctly, which is always the sign of a good writer, right?
I’m pleased with my efforts. So what’s the message? It isn’t new, and it goes for writers and non-writers alike: Keep trying. Don’t give up on what you love. Never take rejection personally. And always be proud of what you send out into the world, regardless of what happens. If you think your work is worthy, then that’s what matters most.
P.S. If you are interested in reading what pieces of mine get published, please consider subscribing to my monthly author newsletter, in which I post newly published work, tell you about upcoming writing classes and events, update you on what I am reading (and watching), and sometimes offer a doodle.
Photo credit: Jaunathan Gagnon
Return to Me
The first time I lost my beloved silver pendant, I knew where I had left it—in a patient office at a clinic far from home. I could remember I had unclasped the chain, laid it on a little bench behind the curtains where I had undressed from the waist up and then slid my arms into a blue cloth gown with those ties that never quite close the gown correctly or all the way.
I had not realized I had left the silver pendant until it was too late, and when I went back, the office had been cleaned and prepped for the next line of patients and then cleaned again overnight. Am I remembering this correctly? I was told to check the Lost & Found. You’re probably imagining a small clinic with a few patient rooms and a little brown box labeled Lost & Found with some credit cards, a bracelet or two, a wallet. Think again. Think bigger. Think clinic with many floors and also many buildings. Think Lost & Found with so many items there are multiple boxes and cabinets and drawers, and these are filled with papers and sweaters and IDs and keys and coats and scarves that someone thought they had, or counted on having, or counted on keeping. None of us likes to lose something that we believe we were meant to keep.
But this is what happened long ago, eight years, maybe nine, with my pendant. I wore that pendant nearly every day, and I had it, and then I didn’t. It was gone, and there was nothing I could do to get it back—except file a claim at the Lost & Found, hoping the pendant and chain would get turned in, that they might return to me one day after all.
I flew home and left that far-away clinic, and time passed, so much time that I lost hope. And the calls came, one by one, with updates on my health and good news and bad news and then good again so that I didn’t know what to expect with each call. When my phone rang once more with the clinic’s area code, I braced myself. But it was good news this time: they’d found my pendant and were sending it home to me.
I can’t tell you how my spirits soared, maybe because I had believed I could not get anything back, that a thing gone once was gone forever.
The years passed. I wore that pendant nearly every day. And as the years flew by, I was losing things, or maybe the better way to say it is they were being taken away, some small, some too big. This is the way of life. Some things come; some things go. I was trying to accept, am still trying to accept, trying to say that serenity prayer, trying to remind myself that there are so many things I cannot control.
And then about a month ago, I was in another town in another place, and I had that pendant in my hands and I was walking from one room to the next and I was deciding I would not wear the pendant that day after all—I had on a high-neck shirt—and that’s all I can remember, not because I fainted but because I let myself get distracted by a call or text or something I thought I needed to do right then and there and that now I realize of course I did not. By the time evening arrived, or maybe by the next morning, I could not find the pendant, and I looked through every room I’d been in, searched the pockets of every article of clothing I’d worn and combed through every nook and cranny of my terribly large purse. No pendant. Had I really lost it a second time? Was I really that careless?
Apparently, I was.
I left that place and those rooms, and there was nowhere else to look. I wanted my pendant back, but it was gone, and there was nothing I could do to get it back. You must learn to let go, I told myself, a thing I have told myself every day for the last year and longer.
But I wanted my pendant back. I wanted more than my pendant back.
Days passed and then weeks. I told myself it was just a necklace, small and silver. Still, I prayed to St. Anthony, but how in the world was St. Anthony going to give me back my necklace, and wasn’t St. Anthony perhaps busier with other, more important things?
Seven days ago, I returned to the place I had been when I’d lost my silver pendant the second time. I looked around all the rooms once again, but there was nothing. I searched pockets, that big purse. Nothing. The next morning, out in the parking lot, as I walked to my car, something shiny glimmered on the ground.
There it was, my beloved silver pendant, nestled in the mud and leaves.
I rushed toward it, scooped it up, determined to never lose it again. I held it firmly in my hands.
Had St. Anthony listened? Or was it just luck? I’ll never know. But I am grateful.
I can’t get everything back, and I want so much more returned to me. But this life is about acceptance, so I will wear my little silver pendant, and I will keep moving forward, trying to learn how to let go of all of it all along the way.
Photo credit: Otto Hyytiälä from Unsplash.com
Upcoming Online Writing Classes
A Friend Like No Other
Today is her birthday. Maybe because of that—or because the last time I saw her was in autumn 11 years ago, or because three people I love are battling cancer right now, or because this season of my life is when I need her advice—I have been thinking of my friend Tsafi intensely these last couple of weeks.
We met contra dancing when I was single, post-divorce, and still lost and dazed in the dating world. We had a lot in common, despite being from different cultures. Maybe most importantly, we both had a view of the world that was fairly large: neither one of us believed that we had all the answers to how this life works and what happens beyond it. We had ideas, which we batted around. We talked endlessly about spirituality and the energy one brings to something, and what control a person has and does not have in what happens.
We knew each other about a decade, but we were very close the last seven of those years—her last years, as it turned out. Tsafi changed my life in dramatic ways. She singlehandedly altered my view of dating. She taught me how to not chase in a relationship, how to remain open to possibilities and people, and how to let go when letting go had become the obvious choice. Except how many times had I not seen the obvious choice? Countless times, I discovered. From then on, dating got infinitely easier—sure, I still had heartbreak, but there was a stillness inside of me and a certainty that shepherded me through breakups. I have long known about myself that I can do something, even if it’s hard, if I know it’s the right thing. And this is what happened. Knowing what was right came to me faster and became easier, and it gave me a peace.
And without Tsafi, I don’t know that I would have ended up with my husband. As soon as he and I started dating, I began writing my usual mental list of why it might not work. But then Tsafi came to the rescue.
STOP, she said, in the commanding way she had that never once bothered me.
Just be, she told me, reminding me again to be open, to be positive.
And so I was.
I’ve been asking myself this week: Am I a friend like Tsafi? Am I making the kind of impact on my friends that she made on me?
I don’t have answers.
But I do know I still miss her all the time, and I wish I could ask her for advice and guidance as I face life’s troubles. I still need her so much. But she taught me to rely on my own strength and certainty, so I am doing what she probably would have said to do: trust my gut, let things be, and keep on going.
Happy birthday, dear friend. And thank you.
Photo credit: Boris Smokrovic