by PocketPen

Created on: December 28, 2009   Last Updated: July 18, 2010

If you have a strategy, rejection won’t mean defeat. Assume that anything you send out will come back, and be prepared to deal with it when it happens. Very few stories or articles or novels make it on the first try, but if you learn from the experience, you can keep refining your work until it does get accepted.

I organize my list of where to send stories by tiers—sending to the highest ranks first, then down the list. In that way, I know where the story goes next, so that I don’t shove it in a drawer and give up. Of course, if you get comments on what doesn’t work, pay attention to them, but judge the comments against your gut feeling. If you keep getting the same comments, then ignore your gut feeling. Sometimes your gut needs a little training.

What kind of rejection was it?

Most journals and magazines have a hierarchy of rejection slips. The mass produced, “not quite what we’re looking for” rejection may signal that you haven’t read your market correctly. You were out of the running right from the start. Then there’s the short rejection that states, in some way, that this wasn’t right but they’d like to see more. Make sure you make note of it; you’re hitting the right market with the wrong story. After that, a form note with a written (often indecipherable) comment is great. Then comes the personal note. After that comes acceptance. So pay attention to the type of rejection you’re getting and keep your stories going to the ones that thought you came close.

Pay attention to comments.

Sometimes you’ll get a comment that says, for example, the ending didn’t convince them or didn’t make sense. Stop for a moment and think about it. You have a couple of choices: ignore them totally, they’re wrong; rewrite the ending because they’re right; or do nothing for the time being. No matter how much you’ve published, you have to consider whether you’ve gotten it right or not. You can’t write a story that everyone will love (or at least I’ve never seen one), and this may be a reader who zoned out while reading and didn’t get how good the ending was—but you still have to think about it. If you disagree with this assessment, fine; have confidence in yourself and send it out again.

However, if you get a second comment that mirrors the first, then you have to consider that you’re wrong. It’s time to figure out why your

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