What if instead of collecting acceptance letters for short stories, essays, etc., you collect rejections instead?
That’s the question posited in a fascinating article I read last week by writer Kim Liao. Having been long obsessed with getting myself published (and enduring more than my fair share of disappointment as stories were rejected), I was at first skeptical of the merits of such a perspective shift. But then I read on, and Kim’s ideology and methodology began to make more and more sense.
Essentially, she argues that by flipping the acceptance/rejection game on its head, we can lessen the blow of discouragement from rejection–if not wipe it out all together–and therefore make it easier to pick ourselves back up and continue on to fight another day. Rather than zeroing in on getting accepted, you zero in on submitting as many stories to as many journals or magazines as you can, the idea being that if you get 100 rejections in a year, its likely you’ll obtain an acceptance or two as well. You’re playing a quantity game rather than a quality one–which is not to say you should sacrifice the quality of your writing to get more garbage written, but rather to not hold out for that perfect story to sell to the perfect market for the perfect price.
I could ramble on, but why do that when you can just read Kim Liao’s essay yourself? I’ve included the link below. For myself, I’m going to aim for 50 rejections by the end of the year, since I’ve already lost 6 months of rejection-collection time. So far I’ve already obtained 1, but I’ve got more in the pipeline, and if I complete another short story or two and throw them out there to the publishing wolves, then I should be swimming in rejections come year end!
Bradley C. Graham 