By Anshi Purohit
Before seeing my work published in a literary magazine, I was rejected over 200 times.
I started submitting my work—primarily flash fiction and poetry— to literary publications during the summer before my freshman year of high school, and queried literary agents with half-edited manuscripts in eighth grade. Checking my email became the best (and worst) part of my day, and despite the countless hours I’d spent submitting and writing, every email I opened for a year began with the dreaded words: Thank you for submitting…unfortunately…
My story is not unique; many young writers face the same setbacks and question if they are ‘good enough to be writers’, which is demoralizing and heartbreaking. After a year of persistent rejections, it took a thorough shift in mentality for me to convince myself otherwise: that I was good enough, and that I would continue trying.
Now, I am in my sophomore year of high school and my writing has been published in eleven literary magazines and recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards.
Everyone’s writing journey is winding and oftentimes frustrating when we don’t see immediate progress. By breaking down the strategies and mindset I adopted to both cope with these frustrations and grow from them, I hope you come away with the vital message that rejection is a lesson all writers must learn from.
Know Your Basics and Do Your Research
The first publication I submitted to was The New Yorker. I had never read an issue of the New Yorker, nor did I have any previous experience submitting work. I knew the magazine was highly acclaimed, and a lot of ‘famous people’ had work published in it, and that was where my knowledge ended.
So, after skimming the submission guidelines, I sent an email to their submissions inbox with a vague subject line and attached my unedited story about sentient robots as a PDF. Three months later, I was wondering why I had not heard back from them and repeated the same process countless times, either getting no responses or a form rejection. Then, I began to realize what I was doing wrong and changed my approach.
Just from the New Yorker debacle, you might have noticed a few key mistakes I made during my submission process: I didn’t include a cover letter, didn’t read what the magazine published, and—perhaps worst of all—didn’t edit my work seriously.
This is one of the most important takeaways you’ll get from my spiel: if you don’t edit your work beyond the general spellcheck, there is a low chance your work will get published, even if it has a lot of potential. Good editing goes from tackling conceptual aspects of your piece to careful line edits, and you know you’ve been editing mercilessly if your first draft is nothing like your final. Most writers never view their pieces as flawless, and that shouldn’t be the goal of your writing, but getting another pair of eyes on your work or just reading it aloud to catch awkward phrases will go a long way.
To optimize your chances of getting published, you must also familiarize yourself with the literary publications you’ll be submitting to. Familiarize yourself with what makes their publication stand out to you, and read some of the writing they publish to support their authors and get an idea of if your work will fit into their themes. Research and organize your submissions. Create a spreadsheet to track which litmags you’ve submitted to with what pieces; it’s a lifesaver. You should also ask yourself important questions. Does my work fit into the kind of work they publish? Do they require cover letters? Are simultaneous submissions okay? Getting to know the jargon of the literary world will strengthen your submissions.
Overcoming (and learning from) Obstacles
In fact, guess what happened even after I began organizing my submissions in spreadsheets, editing my work, and familiarizing myself with the literary magazines I wanted to submit to? In actuality, I still got rejected many times.
Writing is challenging, and rejections are discouraging and often painful to receive, especially as a young writer introducing their work to the world. However, it is imperative to ground yourself after a difficult writing day by coming back to why you write – your passion. Writing is a source of relief for many, and it helps students articulate and express their diverse voices. Writing helps young people connect to their communities and cultures and even inspires and evokes powerful emotions within others. Every young writer wields power in their words, and rejection does not define the broad scope and impact your writing may have in the future.
All writers start from having no experience. In fact, all people start from having no experience, and we grow through learning from obstacles and mistakes, and sometimes just daring to get started and taking those small steps makes the biggest of differences.
So, I’m going to end by telling you something I should have told myself when I first started on my writing journey: write for yourself, because you are a writer no matter how many rejections you receive. One day, you will see your work published.
Anshi Purohit is a Senior Editor and Outreach Assistant at Polyphony
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