If you’re a writer and you start submitting your work to publishers, the hard and sad truth is that sooner or later (almost certainly sooner) you are going to be rejected. Nearly all writers get at least one rejection, usually several, before they finally get a contracts. I’m a rare exception: the first two works that I ever submitted for publication were both accepted.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid that streak has ended. A few months ago, I submitted a short story to Raconteur Press for an upcoming anthology. Earlier today, Raconteur announced that contracts for said anthology had gone out… and I didn’t get one.
Now to be perfectly honest, this isn’t a definite rejection because Raconteur did not send me a rejection letter. They also announced that they’d received so many excellent submissions that they will doing a Volume 2 (and possibly Volume 3) of the anthology*, and if you didn’t get a contract for Vol. 1 don’t despair. So odds are good that my submission got deferred to a later volume. But it’s still extremely disappointing, especially since I considered my submission to be the best piece of fiction I’ve ever written. I figured that if Leave the Humans Alone, which I thought was one of my weakest works, got selected for the first volume of Raconteur’s Space Marines anthologies, then my submission for this anthology (hardboiled noir) was all but a guaranteed shoe-in.
Why did I get deferred/rejected? I have no idea. There are any number of possibilites. Maybe my story didn’t “fit” with the others that were selected for Volume 1, i.e. the tone or pacing didn’t sync with the others. Maybe I didn’t “hit” the genre correctly or else didn’t quite give the editors what they were looking for. Maybe they pulled numbers out of a hat and mine got higher than #10 (Racontuer typically puts 10 stories in each of their anthologies). Maybe my story isn’t as good as I thought it is, or maybe all of the other submissions were significantly better than mine.
Point is, rejection happens, and 99.9% of the time it isn’t personal (yes, it happens, but it’s extremely rare), it’s just a business decision. So as heartbreaking as rejection can be, don’t take it personally. And more importantly, don’t let it crush your hopes and dreams. Don’t give up on becoming an author just because someone told you “no, we don’t want/like this.” Shop your work around to different publishers, or self-publish if you so choose, and keep working on new material.
As for me? Well, I’m not going to shop my submission around or self-publish it just yet because I’m fairly certain it’s just been deferred rather than outright rejected, but I am going to keep working on new material. I just (as in about a week ago) submitted another short story to Raconteur, and I have one short story in progress and another that I’ve plotted out but need to start writing, both sequels to Showdown at Palladiumtown from Raconteur’s first Space Cowboys anthology, and both starring Jacinta Hawk. One is due by the end of July, while the other is on the calendar but the submission date is still TBD. And I need to get cracking on the Star Wars fanfiction that I’ve been writing on and off (mostly off) for the past few months. Between all that and an upcoming move (long story), I have my work cut out for me.
So remember, don’t take it personally. Just because a publisher rejected it doesn’t mean it’s bad. Don’t quit. And don’t stop writing.
-Andrew
*NOTE: my understanding is that very, very few publishers do this. Usually there is only a single anthology, and if you don’t make the cut for the first and only “volume,” that’s it.
Dealing With Your Muse 