A few years ago I had this story that got rejected all over the place -- like either with a form email/letter or just with the standard deafening silence, and then an editor at one magazine wrote me a lengthy and truly thoughtful email, maybe four or five months after I'd submitted the story; she wrote how she and the other editorial staff had passed my story around and around and went back and forth about publishing it, and she wrote that ultimately she didn't think it was there which you know, was a huge bummer, but it was just the nicest rejection letter I'd ever gotten and was very encouraging to me. So I guess my point is sometimes the goal isn't what you think it is. Sometimes it's not an acceptance but a thoughtful rejection. But I still love that story and am always thinking of ways to work the protagonist into one of my books.
“…sometimes the goal isn’t what you think it is.” Those words are speaking on a really deep level, and not only about writing. More on a ‘this is the key to the city of life’ level. Thanks, Louisa!
And I hope you do work the protag into one of your books. And I hope you keep sending that story o u t. While "nice" rejection letters are better than rote rejections unless an editor gives you a specific reason for the no than it's useless. I got a fabulous rejection from a big magazine about a risky story I wrote telling me how good the characters/situation was etc. But they said no. I know why they didn't accept it. Because it dealt with a very un"woke" character who gets what's coming to them but not without exposing their prejudice. That's just not acceptable anymore. We have to write these careful stories that don't offend anyone. Lord forbid you write a satire with a MC offending everyone. Barry Gifford wouldn't be published today. 😳
Political correctness can definitely be fair game in a story, puncturing the overweening self-satisfaction of a character could be fun and interesting, but it would really have to be about the character and not the cloudy notion of political correctness, imo.
That’s a good idea to think of adding the story and character to a larger work. Also, send more stories to the editors who gave you such a good response.
I’ve had a lot of experience with rejection, but one incident in particular comes to mind after this letter. It happened about 20 years ago. It may not provide any solace, but but it does illustrate how much may depend on an editor’s state of mind on any given day.
I had written a fairly short near-future dark comedy about surgeons, nanotechnology, and nuclear terrorism. A laff riot, right? I sent it to one of the leading science fiction magazines of the day. The editor wrote back to say the story didn’t work but maybe I could address a couple of issues and send it back? I dutifully revised the story and resubmitted it, only to receive a second rejection. Still wasn’t working for the editor.
I did one more revision, not a very significant one as I recall.and sent the story to a well-known online news and culture site that on rare occasion published a little fiction. The story sold right away. (And can still be read there! https://dogb.us/medicine)
Several months later, I was contacted by the original editor, who also edited a major annual year’s-best anthology series. He wanted to include my story in the next edition. Really, the version that had appeared online was not very different from the draft he had rejected a year or so earlier. As far as I can tell, he was just reading it with different eyes on a different day.
All I can really say is, keep sending your pieces out and don’t give up. Writing a good story is only one of many factors that goes into getting published. Luck is a factor, but persistence is what gives you more chances to be lucky.
After I submitted a story to a publication, I received an email from the editor expressing her delight: "I love your stories. You're one of my favorite writers." What's notable is that not only did she reject THAT story, she had rejected every story I'd ever set her. Just because she loved my stories didn't mean they were right for her publication. Why they weren't, I never did figure out.
Humbled and honored that you took the time to answer my question this week, George! A million thanks, and your thoughtful reply was wonderful and encouraging per usual. I will do my best to seek out the counsel of those five tasteful advisors who may be standing silent at the back of the room.
I always, always think of this Neil Gaiman line: “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
In my own capacity as humor editor, I find the personalized rejection is a really tricky thing to compose because it has two jobs: (a) to communicate that this piece was GOOD in many ways but also (b) to unambiguously communicate that I would not like to see another draft of it. Maybe it's because I see a lot of very short pieces, but I sometimes I have heard back from a writer with revisions after I've rejected a piece with a note. "Here, I fixed the things you mentioned." Oh no -- I didn't mean for you to do that!
Sending those notes has made me think that basically there isn't much to read into when I receive them as a writer, except that the editor liked my piece but not quite enough.
Your "thinking of it like a break up" is super helpful, though. I recently had to frame another business-of-being-a-writer thing in a similar relationship way. I'm about to start querying children's literary agents for my work as an author-illustrator, and I realized that instead of putting so much pressure on myself to know ahead of time if the pairing is a good fit for me and for the agent, it's more about knowing I have enough interest to see if I want to "go on a date" and get to know them. It's hard to "get myself out there" and it will take more than one try; it will probably take many many tries! Also I don't have to commit to the first one who shows interest if I'm not that into them after a date and I don't have to take it extremely personally if they aren't that into me (just a *little* personally haha.) Who wants to be with someone who isn't all in with them?
I find it super helpful to transmute unfamiliar human transactions into ones that are more familiar to me. So the breakup perspective is helpful. I've gotten so many rejections as an artist I can't count how many! :) :) Oh well!
I like the check mark/question mark strategy for getting feedback too. I think I will ask my critique group to try that out for me!
Also, a rejection is frequently a blessing. Never feels like it. But if they don't love it, then they're doing you a favor. I was reminded of this anew when my son applied to colleges. "What if I follow your 'be yourself' advice and they don't want or like the real me?" Then it's better to find out now -- that was my response. Which I believe. Even if I don't always practice that level of calm detachment in my own life.
(I've also had the experience -- this is movie business stuff, but it must have some analog in the publishing world -- of a buyer buying my project/pitch/script and only then revealing their horrible plans for it. In fact, it occurs to me now that most if not all of my professional regrets have to do with accepting offers I wish I hadn't. Oh my god. I have to go find ice cream.)
You get a rejection you move on, in no scenario do you resubmit the same/edited story. They want to publish it, they won't reject it in the first place, personalised reasons or not, and if they want to publish it, they certainly will edit it.
I hear what you're saying. FWIW I know of three people who pubbed stories at a journal after it rejected by the same story. (1) Elizabeth Gilbert (ok, I don't know her personally) said early in her career she resubbed a story (maybe after a book came out?) and it got picked up the second time. The editor said, "The story reminds me of something." Gilbert thought to herself, "yeah, this story, which you previously rejected." (2) when a friend got an agent for her novel, the agent subbed her unpubbed stories. Without any changes, a story got picked up by a well-known journal that had previously sent her a generic rejection. (3) a friend, due to poor bookkeeping, accidentally subbed a story to a well-respected journal after it had been rejected (many months or a year before). It got picked up. All three of these were top-notch literary journals. So... I agree it's poor form to re-sub stories but....
Yeah, as King put it in his “On Writing” once you are somebody you don’t get “this is not what we are looking for right now” that often. You’ll always find exceptions, too.
Yeah. My friend (whose agent subbed the story) had mixed feelings. The other friend with sloppy bookkeeping was thrilled! ;) FWIW, my dad, when he's being my cheerleader, has suggested that when I publish my (in-the-works) novel, I will be able to pub all my stories...so keep writing! ;)
Despite, George's positive and thoughtful take on it which I appreciate, serial rejection is kind of a quiet, soul-crushing thing. Advice/encouragement from any established and commercially successful artist is a bit like a narcoleptic giving sleeping tips to an insomniac.
Everyone on this thread has probably given up more times than they can count. As a young person, a rejection of my work made me indignant. I never said it out loud, but the voice in my head was: "I made something f****** brilliant, I'm entitled to success!" As I got older, I internalized the rejection as a complete judgment of my worth and I stopped trying to put anything out at all. The extremes are mirror images of the same thing: an outsized need to be validated.
Now that I'm 53, I'm trying again in little ways here on substack with my publication. I create and publish work every week in a chop-wood-carry-water kind of way. I do it because it feels good and natural to make something and put it out in the world, not for validation, but for connection, to feel less alone in this journey.
There is an alternate universe where John Mayer put down the guitar and George Saunders kept writing technical manuals. Commercial success is not just about talent and craft. It's about timing and luck, and having champions in your life who hold you up. Since I have no control over any of those variables, I have to focus on the one I do have and that's persistence. I believe if I keep writing and sharing in whatever way I can, something good will happen. Or maybe I'm just Forest Gump in the movie they didn't make. ;-)
Love this, Ben. I have most definitely given up more times than I can count. What a non-career path it has turned out to be! But on the other hand, my attempts to publish something, mixed with my attempts to find the perfect mountain, have led me to some amazing friendships, as well as to parenthood. So it hasn’t been a total waste of time and life, I suppose!
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" is a lyric from John Lennon's song "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" from the album Double Fantasy. ("Every day, in every way, it's getting better and better." Just a heartbreaking song.) But Lennon is not the originator of that quote. (Google it!)
Huh, I’d always given John Lennon credit for that. Allen Saunders was before my time. Looks like he originally penned it in Readers Digest. Thanks for setting me straight. I always suspected Lennon was a hack. 😉
Thanks Ben, for reminding me/us how distracting the need to be validated can be. It’s a struggle regardless, but seems especially so when we risk the vulnerability of creating something dear to us then offering it up for evaluation by others. It’s all so loaded.
It is incredibly vulnerable. Writing and publishing is kind of an absurd thing. My mom used to say I would go out under a tree by myself and write songs about being lonely. As writers we live so much in our heads and create worlds that we desperately want to be real or at least seen and the only way that really happens is when someone else reads our work, steps into our world. I never take for granted someone making the time to read or listen to anything I’ve produced.
Yes, I too believe in this alternate universe for each of us. We have bills to pay, people to love, other things to engage in and with, besides having an editor or publisher open the flood gates for us to validation as writers. And I admire your belief that something good will happen with persistence. Maybe it already has. I believe that my persistence in writing has made me more logical and humane and a much better communicator. And helped me see more deeply into how I communicate and can be received.
That’s so true, Dee. And that’s really what I’m talking about when I say something “good” will happen. It’s a journey of self discovery more than anything else.
Hi Ben, I've been thinking over the pluses and minuses of publishing my very long book on Substack, just as you are doing. I know my writing will never appeal to publishers and decided, long ago, never to go that route, but still want to find the few readers who might like what I write. How do you feel about your Substack endeavor?
Hi Joan, I can't pretend to be a serial publishing expert, but I can give you my opinion and point you to a couple of other resources. I learned a tremendous amount in publishing The Memory of My Shadow (https://www.catchrelease.net/s/memory-of-my-shadow) over the past few months. First off, I would say it's a huge commitment to ask anyone to read your novel and that hill is even steeper when you put up the barrier of them only being able to consume it a bite at a time. That said, there are a few things that make it advantageous for you and your readers.
I had the opportunity to do some really meaningful edits and tightening of my story as I prepped each chapter for weekly release. I found things to improve that had been missed in previous editing passes. I also performed the audio narration which turned out to be a key benefit for most of my readers. They were more willing to listen to something new on the go than to sit down and read it at the computer.
The feedback I got from readers was that, while they had initially been frustrated by the weekly drip, they soon came to relish the anticipation of my Monday morning releases. It gave them that little hit of dopamine when they knew something new was coming. Now that it's all out there, new subscribers don't have the waiting to contend with but the challenge now that I'm not dropping a new email with chapters every week is getting folks to discover it.
Thank you so much for your encouragement. A weekly chapter sounds like a good idea. I am currently revising the first volume, as you say, improving sentences, deleting words, etc. The idea of adding audio is interesting, if not a bit intimidating. Thank you again--Joan
I think where we submit our work is really really important -- the job of finding journals, magazines, agents even, who have work you can relate to, recognize, want to read -- I always do better when I research where I’m sending my work and I also tend to understand the rejection/critique better. That said I continue to send stories to the New Yorker like the editor and I are friends! We’re not. I hear nothing. But I audaciously submit.
I made friends with the timid five inside my head a long time ago. I trust them when they’re in the zone and caffeinated to the edge of manic, but not manic.
Don’t let faceless nameless readers who may be having a shit day or buried their their dog or be coming down with a stomach bug, decide if your work is good.
Continue to write among your rejections -- it’s an act of hope and love of craft. You write because it’s what you do.
I just joined this group and I’m so glad to have found you all.
I appreciate your bringing up marketing. As writers today we are not only expected to write brilliantly but also to market, even after publishing. At 86, happy writing poetry, but not as energetic as a decade ago, I decided to skip another self-published book and stick with publishing online to reach more people as I've been having good luck with that. Some sites are personal—one rejection so nice, I felt like thanking the editor! But my major disappointment with marketing is the slippery term. Put yourself out there and say you're grand! Easier for some men than for some women, thanks to the cultural entitlement for men to brag. One fellow I've had many open mics with was told to really market himself by a publisher, which led to his filling FB with poems and with announcements of getting published. One such announcement for a publication in which I too had a poem, which of course he saw, yet, no mention that I was there. This reveals, I think, not only putting oneself forward but competing with others and not putting them forward. Thanks for listening to my rant. Most important, luckily, I know when I've written something good, happy when I find the right word. Damn the system but hold the torpedoes!
I never found an example of self-marketing that is not bragging or putting oneself forward, focusing only on oneself. It’s the nature of the beast. And especially on FB, IG people are only interested in themselves. I had similar experiences. The issue is that not everyone’s character is suitable for this modern day self-marketing techniques. The me me me culture of the influencer is so demeaning.
I can identify David! I tried that approach too at first but the result was that I could only look inside my own head for ideas which wasn't the most interesting place to be!! Now I spend more time out and about chatting to people and am full of ideas but have less time to write!!
I'm am reminded of the first two responses I received on a story. One: "I love the dialogue and hate everything else." Two: "I hate the dialogue and love everything else." Realizing I couldn't edit to those suggestions (except to maybe split the story in two), I continued sending it out until it sold.
A friend once sent a first-person story he wrote based on a real experience, where he only changed the names, to both the nonfiction and fiction editors at particular mag, because he wasn’t sure what it really was or should be. The fiction editor rejected it and then nonfiction editor accepted it with glowing remarks. He chuckled over what that editorial meeting would be like when the journal went to press.
Wonderful post today, thank you for this. One of my pieces got rejected over and over with personalized notes about my tone of anger. I think that's pretty loaded to say to a woman who has a right to be angry. On a happier note, it's going to be published soon in a good home.
For whoever is reading my comment: I have a lot of thoughts about this topic, but anyway, after years of “close but no cigar” on quite a few short stories, I got 41 rejections on the first novel I wrote that got sent out. My big-shot agent at the time gave up on it; all the editors she’d sent it to said it was too depressing. I ended up emailing it to a bunch of friends, basically saying, “I don’t think this book will ever get published and I want SOMEONE to read it.” Then I sent it out, unagented, to a (then) little-known micro-press and they took it. Granta picked me as one of their once-every-ten-years Best Young American Novelists on the basis of that book, and I was the big nobody in the group (Lauren Groff, Ben Lerner, Anthony Marra, etc.)--but it got me going. (A few editors who’d turned it down at the time later said they regretted it.) Anyway. Now that I’ve been a judge for a slew of things myself, I think it’s a lot of column A (skill) and a lot of column B (luck). As well as some other, ineffable thing. But everyone here is still going, and that’s no small thing.
Esme, Thanks so much for sharing your experience. Wow, I had no idea. I was really moved by The Collected Schizophrenias and loved your recent piece in Poets and Writers. Thanks for your encouragement too.
One of my creative-writing professors, Antonya Nelson, used to keep a box of 3x5 cards (this was prior to submitting via email). Each card had the title of a story, and the progress it had with various editors: date of submission, date of return/rejection, etc. She showed us one card that had 40 rejections on it before someone accepted it! If an editor does not like your story, that is all you can glean from it. Maybe the story needs work, or maybe it needs a different audience. I've had one story rejected as being entirely fantasy, and then accepted happily by a different editor.
How I love Antonya Nelson! I'm so jealous. I have three stories that had over 30 rejections before getting accepted. I have one that has never been accepted that has 63 rejections. and some with 30 and 40 something. I've gotten the best, most encouraging rejection for the 63 one from dream journals. And yes I have revised it again and again. I am guilty of sending stories out before they're ready. In fact I would say I always do. So I send them to my top tier journals before they're ready to send.
How lucky, Gabriel, to have had Antonya Nelson for a teacher. I so admire her work! "Party of One" might be my favorite of her stories (from Nothing Right), but it's really hard to choose among them. That she had 40 rejections of one story alone gives credence right there to the process being pretty much a crap shoot---it's not personal, it just is what it is.
Back in the 1970s, I circulated a book and managed, through an agent, to get it in front of the editor in chief at Scribner's (no, not Maxwell Perkins, but his successor). She and the editorial board approved the book and were prepared to offer me a considerable advance, but at the time Charles Scribner IV had to approve it. When he returned from a London trip, his response was "Such a book should never be published."
Sometimes there are factors that have nothing to do with the work itself that result in rejection.
At the time, this convinced me (and my agent) there was likely no market for the book. It had already been rejected by several other publishers as "too down." It was close to acceptance at Dell around then, but the editor wanted me to do a book I thought would be exploitative. He later found someone else to do his version of the book and stole my idea for the book and the title. I finally finished and published it myself last year.
In a way. I gave up on that book (a collection of nonfiction stories and photographs about New York City street people) and applied for a teaching fellowship at Boston University in creative writing.
Wow, and wow. That book sounds like it was eminently publishable, not to mention necessary. Yet perhaps the next chapter of your life story was also necessary.
Well... it turns out it was eminently publishable. At the time, I had suggested Macmillan as the likely publisher. My agent didn't know anyone there and didn't send it. Two years later, an editor at Dell who had rejected the book moved to Macmillan and hired a young photographer to do the book -- same title and very similar range of subjects, but with an emphasis on street performers and eccentric characters rather than the more inclusive view I had of street people. That book made a significant splash.
As I said, there are many reasons for a book or story not being published, and the quality of the piece is only one of them. I don't think this has changed in the 45 years since my experience.
I don't think it has, David. Some years ago a m/s of mine was rejected by Fourth Estate, a good publisher in the UK. The editor wrote to my agent that he would "eat his hat" if it turned out to be a prizewinner but he wasn't going to publish it. His final comment was "It's a pity she's not married to a politician or a rock star". The book was published eventually and shortlisted for a prize.
Fascinating story David, especially the subsequent publication of a very similar book by Macmillan. That's dishonest but I guess there was no point pursuing them into court . . .
I did talk with an attorney after I found out about the other book. Although it seemed likely to me that either the Scribner's editor had moved to Macmillan or the Dell editor had, the attorney said it would be difficult to do anything because ideas and titles can't be copyrighted, and the book had been through several other publishing houses, too.
I only learned it was the editor at Dell because the Internet came into existence and I looked him up and found his obit, which included his career moves.
The book had another near miss about 10 years later. One of my influences was Hubert Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn." A friend from Paris was working as a location scout for the director, and on a visit, my friend mentioned that Hubert Selby was often on the set and he'd gotten to know him. I gave him a copy of the original version of my book and he showed it to Selby, who didn't want to look at it, but he brought it back to Paris and showed it to his mother's boyfriend, who was an editor at the French publishing house Denoel. That editor was starting a new series and wanted to include me in it. However, he turned out to have bipolar disorder. He started translating it to English, got depressed, let the series languished, became manic and quit Denoel. The book and series languished there for a year or two until another editor finally took over, remade the series as he saw it, and dropped me and several of the other authors.
So, Charles Scribner IV was prophetic (until I finally finished the book and self-published last year).
"(It’s kind of like trying to explain, in 100 words or so, why you didn’t fall in love with someone you briefly dated.)"
So. I teach screenwriting. One of the topics that comes up all the time is what to do with "notes." Studio notes, workshop notes, trusted friend notes, parental notes. Because my own impulse re notes has always been contradictory: (1) **** these notes; and (2) oh my god if I do everything they say then they will buy it/make it/love me whooooo! And I know that the only way to make the work better is to be clear-sighted about its strengths and weaknesses, so ignoring notes from smart people sounds like it's probably a bad idea. We have to respect the true notes and repel the false ones. But. . . how?
Early in my career, when I was first sending scripts out, I would get these thoughtful rejections that explained the "reasons" they were saying no. And I would think, great, if I go and fix these things, they'll buy it. So I would try to go fix the things. And then I would resubmit. And they would come back at me with a bunch of new things to fix. Round and round. It took me awhile to realize that the reasons were disconnected from the rejection. They read it. They realized they didn't want it. The reasons (or at least the articulated reasons) came after.
I started thinking of it like a break up. And this is the analogy I use with my students. Your significant other breaks up with you. And you make the mistake of asking why. And they give you five reasons. And you take the reasons to heart and go away and work on yourself and fix those five things. Then you go back to them and say "ALL FIXED CAN WE GET BACK TOGETHER NOW?" And the answer is no. WHY? Five new reasons.
But the real reason is just because they don't want to be with you anymore.
You still have to consider their stated reasons, because not to is to risk being an ass. You want to be clear-eyed about your own failings. That's the only way to get better, to make the work better, etc. But . . . in terms of the specific reaction to the specific notes, you kind of have to disconnect cause and effect.
The other thing your post is making me think of is this thing that film editor and genius Walter Murch says in his insanely great book In the Blink of an Eye, which is about film editing but is so brilliant and wise that it's basically a writing/storytelling craft book. In the book, he talks about getting feedback from test/preview audiences. He's addressing the thing where preview audiences say they don't like a certain scene and so the production cuts out or alters the scene and it kills the whole movie. What he argues is that you have to listen to the note from the audience (they don't like the scene) but you need to be careful about doing the thing they suggest to fix it (get rid of the scene). I'm sure I'm getting this all slightly wrong because I'm going from memory and it's been awhile -- but I think he calls it the "principle of referred pain."
You go to the doctor with a pain in your elbow. You want your elbow fixed. The doctor doesn't just leap to cutting into your elbow. He might realize that the pain in your elbow is being caused by, say, a pinched nerve in your back. So he makes or suggests a back-related change, and the pain in your elbow disappears.
Yes, this is really good advice for writing workshops too - more valuable to know the "where" of what is wrong than the "how to fix it" part. I sometimes say it would be perfect if, instead of notes, every reader produced a sort of color-coded response printout - RED for "great, right with you," all the way down to....some other color for "I'm done, have checked out." Seeing that, especially from 5 or 6 good readers, the writer would know a really valuable thing...
I do a kind of watered down version of that in my workshops; I assign each student one of their peer's scripts to "mark up." They are allowed to make two kinds of marks: a check (I LIKE THIS) and a question mark (I am lost here; I don't understand this; I am confused). And NO explanations. The writers get their marked-up drafts and can ask questions of the marker-upper if need be. I thought the question marks would require explanation, but they rarely do. Students say the noteless mark-ups are frequently more useful than the articulated feedback in the room.
As a writer, working with studio notes, I always got the most out of actually seeing the old-timey mogul/producer/bossman's copy of the script with their impatient scrawl in it, just big checks where things worked and big red slashes through entire scenes they hated, and angry question marks over things they didn't get. That was information I could use. (Sadly, you almost never get to see those documents. Instead you got the polite but vague notes memo: "While we feel this draft goes a long way toward. . .")
I love this idea, too. Honestly, I always want to know what's working and what's not in my stories, but I don't want to hear how someone else would write it.
Love this color-coded idea. When I teach I give notes (and encourage my students) to make notes on the first read of exactly what their reaction is in real-time, because I think it trains those inner five to sit up and speak up before the "oh now I get what she meant on page 1" revision of the reading experience that robs the writer of the impression she's making on the page.
The comments about workshopping bring up a question I’d like to ask. If a scene or portion of a story has no feeling or intensity, can a reader ask the writer to simply express, in spoken conversation, what she wanted to say in that scene? Once a friend asked me to read a scene in which an adopted young woman was speaking to the mother who adopted her. Reading it, something was missing, so I asked my friend to tell me what she wanted to say in the scene. She spoke for a long time, with deep feeling, so I asked if she could write what she’d just told me. Is that an acceptable way to critique?
Why not? I've said it to only two friends, but each time, they didn't seem to know what to do with my comment. Perhaps, they were afraid of putting into writing the emotional content they had poured out to a confidante. Or maybe they were incapable of digging deeply into those dark places inside oneself--a type of courage I believe a skillful writer needs. I believe those writers lacked the courage, or ability, because their writing didn't hold my interest. Right now, I'm reading Gogol's The Portrait, a story that seems to speak to another form of artistic courage which allows the innermost self to shine through in one's work, and I'm taking it to heart.
I love your post. I also teach - grad students- (writer/directors) and it’s so true / part of what we’re hoping to impart is how to translate script notes, as you suggest - how to get to the cause behind the symptoms. One upside of our program is that students get different (sometimes wildly different) notes from faculty of equal measure - they’re baffled at first and though it may seem counterintuitive it forces them to decipher what fits and what doesn’t. And in sync with counsel George has given - to suss out the heart of their vision for the script/movie.
Yay for your parents driving across the whole country! Have a great time with them.
And thanks for writing about rejection, it’s the icicle stab that can never not hurt. I appreciate your words, especially on the difficult jobs of editors and how the writer might choose to react to the rejection. I’m getting ready to query agents for a novel and expect lots of rejection, particularly in light of the challenges to publishing I keep reading about. For years I’ve submitted to literary magazines, and the 85 percent rejection rate seems accurate. Some never bother to reply, some send one-line rejections many months later, and some send kind notes. I get it, most of them are understaffed, underfunded, and doing it for the love of it. I don’t take it personally, but it’s still not easy. A few small successes have buoyed me. But mostly, it’s the writing that buoys me, I love it too much and can’t stop.
I have taken a different tack to build up my writer’s platform. It’s a gamble and I hope it’s valid. There are a lot of less well-known magazines hungry for content, which means less rejection! Maybe my story or article won’t reach the wide readership or literary agents as it might in the big-league magazines, but I get to build up a loyal following over time. That counts for something, I hope. In the past two years I had 30 humor pieces published in humor mags you’ve probably never heard of, (have been studying with the founder of The Onion) and I now write regularly for a small regional publication (both humor and non-humor) and it’s a blast. A couple of my stories got picked up by larger publications, and one went mildly viral. That was a thrill. Occasionally I’ll submit to a big leaguer, but mostly it’s small publications, because they don’t reject as much. On the one hand you could say I’m aiming low, but on the other, a literary agent who’s considering my query could look at my website and browse through lots of published pieces. I don’t have anything in The New York Times, or The Sun, or Granta, or The New Yorker, but I do have more than 60 articles published. Does this strategy make sense? I hope so.
Here's a similar question (Is this where people ask questions—in the comments?) I wrote a short piece I really love. It's not exactly "a story." It's full of detail, it has emotion and movement, but not a thorough beginning/ middle/ end. It's a slice not a whole pie. Maybe two slices. I asked for feedback from a magazine rejection (paid for advice actually) I was curious. The advice was: It's lovely, but it's not a story, make it one." So...then I read Sam Shepard's collection called Great Dream Of Heaven. Amazing, intricate, near perfect writing, I loved it. But 90% of his stories, by conventional definition, are not stories. The pieces are mostly very brief. They don't have beginning/ middle/ end. You want more when he's done. You're dying to know what happened to these people, but he cuts the cord way before most anyone else would. And yet there are all the rave reviews about his work. They are a slice or two. And goddammit that pie tastes good. So what's a guy to do? When is a story a story? And does it matter? And who's asking? In your opinion, how much "plot" (or dramatic unfolding) is needed?
Most short stories are slices, slices of life or of a life. But still they need a beginning, middle and end. Many of Sam Shepard's pieces do have a beginning, middle and end (to my reading).
I would suggest that you figure out what each editor or editorial board considers a story to be, and send yours to the ones who appreciate it for how it is expressed. But maybe the advice you got from the magazine editors you paid is still helpful. Maybe the Sam Shepard stories are short short or flash, and therefore a different structure than a standard length story. Since he was primarily a playwright, he would likely write a spare and poetic story, finding the essence in dialogue, setting and theme. Anyway, you may be writing good slices and sending them to people who like the whole pie.
When is a story a story is a great question. For me the beginning middle end thing is less helpful than Freytag's pyramid because it reminds us that there has to be some escalation (always be escalating, isn't that a Saunders-ism?).
It's very hard to get full resolution in a short story though some (maybe Tenth of December?) manage it. By contrast, Raymond Carver's stories are almost all slices, he leaves you wanting more but also he cuts off the slice when you know enough, you understand (if you ponder a while) why he chose to show you this significant, slim section of a character's life.
So there's no simple answer I know of, but I reckon a story should be propulsive and should matter, there should probably be tension and change and maybe some, probably partial, resolution.
One more example: George's The Falls is helpful here because it goes full throttle on the escalation, right to the last sentence. Hell of an adrenaline rush. And the story answers its own central question (will he intervene) without necessarily giving the reader the resolution they crave.
Most short stories are slices. They don't require back story or they require minimal back story. they are an in, tell the story and an out. But they do require a beginning, middle and end. And to my reading of Sam Shepard's stories, most have a beginning, middle and end.
Jealous. Verdi’s Requiem was the first piece of classical music I bought after seeing it performed at university. Dies Irae blew the doors off the place. Wonderful to hear good news in the arts; I was saddened to hear that Center Theater Group in LA recently paused a chunk of their programming. Good on you for keeping up your support.
A few years ago I had this story that got rejected all over the place -- like either with a form email/letter or just with the standard deafening silence, and then an editor at one magazine wrote me a lengthy and truly thoughtful email, maybe four or five months after I'd submitted the story; she wrote how she and the other editorial staff had passed my story around and around and went back and forth about publishing it, and she wrote that ultimately she didn't think it was there which you know, was a huge bummer, but it was just the nicest rejection letter I'd ever gotten and was very encouraging to me. So I guess my point is sometimes the goal isn't what you think it is. Sometimes it's not an acceptance but a thoughtful rejection. But I still love that story and am always thinking of ways to work the protagonist into one of my books.
“…sometimes the goal isn’t what you think it is.” Those words are speaking on a really deep level, and not only about writing. More on a ‘this is the key to the city of life’ level. Thanks, Louisa!
And I hope you do work the protag into one of your books. And I hope you keep sending that story o u t. While "nice" rejection letters are better than rote rejections unless an editor gives you a specific reason for the no than it's useless. I got a fabulous rejection from a big magazine about a risky story I wrote telling me how good the characters/situation was etc. But they said no. I know why they didn't accept it. Because it dealt with a very un"woke" character who gets what's coming to them but not without exposing their prejudice. That's just not acceptable anymore. We have to write these careful stories that don't offend anyone. Lord forbid you write a satire with a MC offending everyone. Barry Gifford wouldn't be published today. 😳
Lucinda, while I don’t know your particular character and story, the interest is still out there for stories that reveal who a person is.
🌷 I haven’t lost hope. Still this one takes aim at political correctness & therein lies the issue. 😎
Political correctness can definitely be fair game in a story, puncturing the overweening self-satisfaction of a character could be fun and interesting, but it would really have to be about the character and not the cloudy notion of political correctness, imo.
I think you can write about both. GS does it all the time.
It, political correctness, is such a vague concept and has shifted a lot in meaning and context since I first came across it in the 1980s.
That’s a good idea to think of adding the story and character to a larger work. Also, send more stories to the editors who gave you such a good response.
I’ve had a lot of experience with rejection, but one incident in particular comes to mind after this letter. It happened about 20 years ago. It may not provide any solace, but but it does illustrate how much may depend on an editor’s state of mind on any given day.
I had written a fairly short near-future dark comedy about surgeons, nanotechnology, and nuclear terrorism. A laff riot, right? I sent it to one of the leading science fiction magazines of the day. The editor wrote back to say the story didn’t work but maybe I could address a couple of issues and send it back? I dutifully revised the story and resubmitted it, only to receive a second rejection. Still wasn’t working for the editor.
I did one more revision, not a very significant one as I recall.and sent the story to a well-known online news and culture site that on rare occasion published a little fiction. The story sold right away. (And can still be read there! https://dogb.us/medicine)
Several months later, I was contacted by the original editor, who also edited a major annual year’s-best anthology series. He wanted to include my story in the next edition. Really, the version that had appeared online was not very different from the draft he had rejected a year or so earlier. As far as I can tell, he was just reading it with different eyes on a different day.
All I can really say is, keep sending your pieces out and don’t give up. Writing a good story is only one of many factors that goes into getting published. Luck is a factor, but persistence is what gives you more chances to be lucky.
After I submitted a story to a publication, I received an email from the editor expressing her delight: "I love your stories. You're one of my favorite writers." What's notable is that not only did she reject THAT story, she had rejected every story I'd ever set her. Just because she loved my stories didn't mean they were right for her publication. Why they weren't, I never did figure out.
This is great. “I’m one of your favorite writers.” “Yes.” Are you interested in publishing my work?” “No”
Hysterical. Thank you for this.
Even having spent time on the editing side, it’s all a mystery to me.
Like everything else, it seems.
This story about a story is the rub, William!
Humbled and honored that you took the time to answer my question this week, George! A million thanks, and your thoughtful reply was wonderful and encouraging per usual. I will do my best to seek out the counsel of those five tasteful advisors who may be standing silent at the back of the room.
So glad you wrote in, it’s such an interesting discussion!
Fabulous questioning, Zack. Sometimes it seems like the best archer wins, regardless of the content of the arrow. But not always!
I always, always think of this Neil Gaiman line: “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”
In my own capacity as humor editor, I find the personalized rejection is a really tricky thing to compose because it has two jobs: (a) to communicate that this piece was GOOD in many ways but also (b) to unambiguously communicate that I would not like to see another draft of it. Maybe it's because I see a lot of very short pieces, but I sometimes I have heard back from a writer with revisions after I've rejected a piece with a note. "Here, I fixed the things you mentioned." Oh no -- I didn't mean for you to do that!
Sending those notes has made me think that basically there isn't much to read into when I receive them as a writer, except that the editor liked my piece but not quite enough.
The Gaiman quote is a much better version of the thing I just tried to say in about a million words.
Your "thinking of it like a break up" is super helpful, though. I recently had to frame another business-of-being-a-writer thing in a similar relationship way. I'm about to start querying children's literary agents for my work as an author-illustrator, and I realized that instead of putting so much pressure on myself to know ahead of time if the pairing is a good fit for me and for the agent, it's more about knowing I have enough interest to see if I want to "go on a date" and get to know them. It's hard to "get myself out there" and it will take more than one try; it will probably take many many tries! Also I don't have to commit to the first one who shows interest if I'm not that into them after a date and I don't have to take it extremely personally if they aren't that into me (just a *little* personally haha.) Who wants to be with someone who isn't all in with them?
I find it super helpful to transmute unfamiliar human transactions into ones that are more familiar to me. So the breakup perspective is helpful. I've gotten so many rejections as an artist I can't count how many! :) :) Oh well!
I like the check mark/question mark strategy for getting feedback too. I think I will ask my critique group to try that out for me!
Also, a rejection is frequently a blessing. Never feels like it. But if they don't love it, then they're doing you a favor. I was reminded of this anew when my son applied to colleges. "What if I follow your 'be yourself' advice and they don't want or like the real me?" Then it's better to find out now -- that was my response. Which I believe. Even if I don't always practice that level of calm detachment in my own life.
(I've also had the experience -- this is movie business stuff, but it must have some analog in the publishing world -- of a buyer buying my project/pitch/script and only then revealing their horrible plans for it. In fact, it occurs to me now that most if not all of my professional regrets have to do with accepting offers I wish I hadn't. Oh my god. I have to go find ice cream.)
I'd been thinking of that Gaiman quote a lot in the context of story club and struggling to remember exactly how it went. Thanks for sharing!
You get a rejection you move on, in no scenario do you resubmit the same/edited story. They want to publish it, they won't reject it in the first place, personalised reasons or not, and if they want to publish it, they certainly will edit it.
I hear what you're saying. FWIW I know of three people who pubbed stories at a journal after it rejected by the same story. (1) Elizabeth Gilbert (ok, I don't know her personally) said early in her career she resubbed a story (maybe after a book came out?) and it got picked up the second time. The editor said, "The story reminds me of something." Gilbert thought to herself, "yeah, this story, which you previously rejected." (2) when a friend got an agent for her novel, the agent subbed her unpubbed stories. Without any changes, a story got picked up by a well-known journal that had previously sent her a generic rejection. (3) a friend, due to poor bookkeeping, accidentally subbed a story to a well-respected journal after it had been rejected (many months or a year before). It got picked up. All three of these were top-notch literary journals. So... I agree it's poor form to re-sub stories but....
Yeah, as King put it in his “On Writing” once you are somebody you don’t get “this is not what we are looking for right now” that often. You’ll always find exceptions, too.
Yeah. My friend (whose agent subbed the story) had mixed feelings. The other friend with sloppy bookkeeping was thrilled! ;) FWIW, my dad, when he's being my cheerleader, has suggested that when I publish my (in-the-works) novel, I will be able to pub all my stories...so keep writing! ;)
Indeed, it is a numbers game. Someone will like it. Keep submitting and above all, keep writing.
Despite, George's positive and thoughtful take on it which I appreciate, serial rejection is kind of a quiet, soul-crushing thing. Advice/encouragement from any established and commercially successful artist is a bit like a narcoleptic giving sleeping tips to an insomniac.
Everyone on this thread has probably given up more times than they can count. As a young person, a rejection of my work made me indignant. I never said it out loud, but the voice in my head was: "I made something f****** brilliant, I'm entitled to success!" As I got older, I internalized the rejection as a complete judgment of my worth and I stopped trying to put anything out at all. The extremes are mirror images of the same thing: an outsized need to be validated.
Now that I'm 53, I'm trying again in little ways here on substack with my publication. I create and publish work every week in a chop-wood-carry-water kind of way. I do it because it feels good and natural to make something and put it out in the world, not for validation, but for connection, to feel less alone in this journey.
There is an alternate universe where John Mayer put down the guitar and George Saunders kept writing technical manuals. Commercial success is not just about talent and craft. It's about timing and luck, and having champions in your life who hold you up. Since I have no control over any of those variables, I have to focus on the one I do have and that's persistence. I believe if I keep writing and sharing in whatever way I can, something good will happen. Or maybe I'm just Forest Gump in the movie they didn't make. ;-)
Love this, Ben. I have most definitely given up more times than I can count. What a non-career path it has turned out to be! But on the other hand, my attempts to publish something, mixed with my attempts to find the perfect mountain, have led me to some amazing friendships, as well as to parenthood. So it hasn’t been a total waste of time and life, I suppose!
Absolutely not a waste of time. Didn’t John Lennon say that life is what happens when you’re making other plans?
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" is a lyric from John Lennon's song "Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)" from the album Double Fantasy. ("Every day, in every way, it's getting better and better." Just a heartbreaking song.) But Lennon is not the originator of that quote. (Google it!)
Huh, I’d always given John Lennon credit for that. Allen Saunders was before my time. Looks like he originally penned it in Readers Digest. Thanks for setting me straight. I always suspected Lennon was a hack. 😉
You're the best. I did google it. Thanks!
Thanks, Charlie!
If not, he sure should have. But then again he was not only part of the zeitgeist: he was the zeitgeist (while making other plans).
Thanks Ben, for reminding me/us how distracting the need to be validated can be. It’s a struggle regardless, but seems especially so when we risk the vulnerability of creating something dear to us then offering it up for evaluation by others. It’s all so loaded.
It is incredibly vulnerable. Writing and publishing is kind of an absurd thing. My mom used to say I would go out under a tree by myself and write songs about being lonely. As writers we live so much in our heads and create worlds that we desperately want to be real or at least seen and the only way that really happens is when someone else reads our work, steps into our world. I never take for granted someone making the time to read or listen to anything I’ve produced.
Yes, I too believe in this alternate universe for each of us. We have bills to pay, people to love, other things to engage in and with, besides having an editor or publisher open the flood gates for us to validation as writers. And I admire your belief that something good will happen with persistence. Maybe it already has. I believe that my persistence in writing has made me more logical and humane and a much better communicator. And helped me see more deeply into how I communicate and can be received.
That’s so true, Dee. And that’s really what I’m talking about when I say something “good” will happen. It’s a journey of self discovery more than anything else.
Hi Ben, I've been thinking over the pluses and minuses of publishing my very long book on Substack, just as you are doing. I know my writing will never appeal to publishers and decided, long ago, never to go that route, but still want to find the few readers who might like what I write. How do you feel about your Substack endeavor?
Hi Joan, I can't pretend to be a serial publishing expert, but I can give you my opinion and point you to a couple of other resources. I learned a tremendous amount in publishing The Memory of My Shadow (https://www.catchrelease.net/s/memory-of-my-shadow) over the past few months. First off, I would say it's a huge commitment to ask anyone to read your novel and that hill is even steeper when you put up the barrier of them only being able to consume it a bite at a time. That said, there are a few things that make it advantageous for you and your readers.
I had the opportunity to do some really meaningful edits and tightening of my story as I prepped each chapter for weekly release. I found things to improve that had been missed in previous editing passes. I also performed the audio narration which turned out to be a key benefit for most of my readers. They were more willing to listen to something new on the go than to sit down and read it at the computer.
The feedback I got from readers was that, while they had initially been frustrated by the weekly drip, they soon came to relish the anticipation of my Monday morning releases. It gave them that little hit of dopamine when they knew something new was coming. Now that it's all out there, new subscribers don't have the waiting to contend with but the challenge now that I'm not dropping a new email with chapters every week is getting folks to discover it.
As for other resources, I'd point you to Simon Jones: https://simonkjones.substack.com/
Sarah Fay: https://www.writersatwork.net/ also provides some helpful information about publishing on substack.
Best of luck with your book no matter what path you ultimately decide on!
Thank you so much for your encouragement. A weekly chapter sounds like a good idea. I am currently revising the first volume, as you say, improving sentences, deleting words, etc. The idea of adding audio is interesting, if not a bit intimidating. Thank you again--Joan
I think where we submit our work is really really important -- the job of finding journals, magazines, agents even, who have work you can relate to, recognize, want to read -- I always do better when I research where I’m sending my work and I also tend to understand the rejection/critique better. That said I continue to send stories to the New Yorker like the editor and I are friends! We’re not. I hear nothing. But I audaciously submit.
I made friends with the timid five inside my head a long time ago. I trust them when they’re in the zone and caffeinated to the edge of manic, but not manic.
Don’t let faceless nameless readers who may be having a shit day or buried their their dog or be coming down with a stomach bug, decide if your work is good.
Continue to write among your rejections -- it’s an act of hope and love of craft. You write because it’s what you do.
I just joined this group and I’m so glad to have found you all.
Thanks, miriam
"I continue to send stories to the New Yorker like the editor and I are friends!" Love that! And may you one day truly be friends :)
This is so damn good - thanks for saying it, Miriam.
You bet, glad it sang for you
I appreciate your bringing up marketing. As writers today we are not only expected to write brilliantly but also to market, even after publishing. At 86, happy writing poetry, but not as energetic as a decade ago, I decided to skip another self-published book and stick with publishing online to reach more people as I've been having good luck with that. Some sites are personal—one rejection so nice, I felt like thanking the editor! But my major disappointment with marketing is the slippery term. Put yourself out there and say you're grand! Easier for some men than for some women, thanks to the cultural entitlement for men to brag. One fellow I've had many open mics with was told to really market himself by a publisher, which led to his filling FB with poems and with announcements of getting published. One such announcement for a publication in which I too had a poem, which of course he saw, yet, no mention that I was there. This reveals, I think, not only putting oneself forward but competing with others and not putting them forward. Thanks for listening to my rant. Most important, luckily, I know when I've written something good, happy when I find the right word. Damn the system but hold the torpedoes!
I never found an example of self-marketing that is not bragging or putting oneself forward, focusing only on oneself. It’s the nature of the beast. And especially on FB, IG people are only interested in themselves. I had similar experiences. The issue is that not everyone’s character is suitable for this modern day self-marketing techniques. The me me me culture of the influencer is so demeaning.
Part of my original desire to write was that maybe I could be a hermit, hiding behind the flow of words, beneath roots and rocks.
I can identify David! I tried that approach too at first but the result was that I could only look inside my own head for ideas which wasn't the most interesting place to be!! Now I spend more time out and about chatting to people and am full of ideas but have less time to write!!
Right. It’s always one way or the other, until and unless we finally find a way to balance that. (Teetering over here.)
I have resolved recently to keep Monday and Tuesday free as writing days. It's amazing to me how the days fill up when one is retired!!
"Enough about me, what do you think of me so far?" I throw up in my mouth a little bit every time I have to post something to promote my work.
I know that guy. Or I should say, a guy like that. I know people have to promote, but sometimes it goes to another level, as you wrote, bragging.
It seems like quite an accomplishment to know when you’re on it.
I was unable to edit and get rid of the 'so's. Usually proof better!
Loved your last line!
I'm am reminded of the first two responses I received on a story. One: "I love the dialogue and hate everything else." Two: "I hate the dialogue and love everything else." Realizing I couldn't edit to those suggestions (except to maybe split the story in two), I continued sending it out until it sold.
A friend once sent a first-person story he wrote based on a real experience, where he only changed the names, to both the nonfiction and fiction editors at particular mag, because he wasn’t sure what it really was or should be. The fiction editor rejected it and then nonfiction editor accepted it with glowing remarks. He chuckled over what that editorial meeting would be like when the journal went to press.
This totally captures the absurdity of our dilemma. Love it. Thank you Stephen.
Wonderful post today, thank you for this. One of my pieces got rejected over and over with personalized notes about my tone of anger. I think that's pretty loaded to say to a woman who has a right to be angry. On a happier note, it's going to be published soon in a good home.
Congratulations, Jessica on finding a good home for your work!
Thank you so much, Lynn!
For whoever is reading my comment: I have a lot of thoughts about this topic, but anyway, after years of “close but no cigar” on quite a few short stories, I got 41 rejections on the first novel I wrote that got sent out. My big-shot agent at the time gave up on it; all the editors she’d sent it to said it was too depressing. I ended up emailing it to a bunch of friends, basically saying, “I don’t think this book will ever get published and I want SOMEONE to read it.” Then I sent it out, unagented, to a (then) little-known micro-press and they took it. Granta picked me as one of their once-every-ten-years Best Young American Novelists on the basis of that book, and I was the big nobody in the group (Lauren Groff, Ben Lerner, Anthony Marra, etc.)--but it got me going. (A few editors who’d turned it down at the time later said they regretted it.) Anyway. Now that I’ve been a judge for a slew of things myself, I think it’s a lot of column A (skill) and a lot of column B (luck). As well as some other, ineffable thing. But everyone here is still going, and that’s no small thing.
Esme, Thanks so much for sharing your experience. Wow, I had no idea. I was really moved by The Collected Schizophrenias and loved your recent piece in Poets and Writers. Thanks for your encouragement too.
One of my creative-writing professors, Antonya Nelson, used to keep a box of 3x5 cards (this was prior to submitting via email). Each card had the title of a story, and the progress it had with various editors: date of submission, date of return/rejection, etc. She showed us one card that had 40 rejections on it before someone accepted it! If an editor does not like your story, that is all you can glean from it. Maybe the story needs work, or maybe it needs a different audience. I've had one story rejected as being entirely fantasy, and then accepted happily by a different editor.
How I love Antonya Nelson! I'm so jealous. I have three stories that had over 30 rejections before getting accepted. I have one that has never been accepted that has 63 rejections. and some with 30 and 40 something. I've gotten the best, most encouraging rejection for the 63 one from dream journals. And yes I have revised it again and again. I am guilty of sending stories out before they're ready. In fact I would say I always do. So I send them to my top tier journals before they're ready to send.
Do I think about quitting? Every day.
Thank you for the encouragement.
How lucky, Gabriel, to have had Antonya Nelson for a teacher. I so admire her work! "Party of One" might be my favorite of her stories (from Nothing Right), but it's really hard to choose among them. That she had 40 rejections of one story alone gives credence right there to the process being pretty much a crap shoot---it's not personal, it just is what it is.
Exactly!
Oh, wow... if it sometimes takes Antonya 40 tries, I shouldn't give up with less than a 100.
Back in the 1970s, I circulated a book and managed, through an agent, to get it in front of the editor in chief at Scribner's (no, not Maxwell Perkins, but his successor). She and the editorial board approved the book and were prepared to offer me a considerable advance, but at the time Charles Scribner IV had to approve it. When he returned from a London trip, his response was "Such a book should never be published."
Sometimes there are factors that have nothing to do with the work itself that result in rejection.
What a gut punch, David. I hope you and your book recovered.
At the time, this convinced me (and my agent) there was likely no market for the book. It had already been rejected by several other publishers as "too down." It was close to acceptance at Dell around then, but the editor wanted me to do a book I thought would be exploitative. He later found someone else to do his version of the book and stole my idea for the book and the title. I finally finished and published it myself last year.
Did another door open when that one was so violently slammed shut?
In a way. I gave up on that book (a collection of nonfiction stories and photographs about New York City street people) and applied for a teaching fellowship at Boston University in creative writing.
Wow, and wow. That book sounds like it was eminently publishable, not to mention necessary. Yet perhaps the next chapter of your life story was also necessary.
Well... it turns out it was eminently publishable. At the time, I had suggested Macmillan as the likely publisher. My agent didn't know anyone there and didn't send it. Two years later, an editor at Dell who had rejected the book moved to Macmillan and hired a young photographer to do the book -- same title and very similar range of subjects, but with an emphasis on street performers and eccentric characters rather than the more inclusive view I had of street people. That book made a significant splash.
As I said, there are many reasons for a book or story not being published, and the quality of the piece is only one of them. I don't think this has changed in the 45 years since my experience.
I don't think it has, David. Some years ago a m/s of mine was rejected by Fourth Estate, a good publisher in the UK. The editor wrote to my agent that he would "eat his hat" if it turned out to be a prizewinner but he wasn't going to publish it. His final comment was "It's a pity she's not married to a politician or a rock star". The book was published eventually and shortlisted for a prize.
Skill, momentum, timing, luck, and who you know, to start with, it sounds like. Quite the mating dance.
Fascinating story David, especially the subsequent publication of a very similar book by Macmillan. That's dishonest but I guess there was no point pursuing them into court . . .
I did talk with an attorney after I found out about the other book. Although it seemed likely to me that either the Scribner's editor had moved to Macmillan or the Dell editor had, the attorney said it would be difficult to do anything because ideas and titles can't be copyrighted, and the book had been through several other publishing houses, too.
I only learned it was the editor at Dell because the Internet came into existence and I looked him up and found his obit, which included his career moves.
The book had another near miss about 10 years later. One of my influences was Hubert Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn." A friend from Paris was working as a location scout for the director, and on a visit, my friend mentioned that Hubert Selby was often on the set and he'd gotten to know him. I gave him a copy of the original version of my book and he showed it to Selby, who didn't want to look at it, but he brought it back to Paris and showed it to his mother's boyfriend, who was an editor at the French publishing house Denoel. That editor was starting a new series and wanted to include me in it. However, he turned out to have bipolar disorder. He started translating it to English, got depressed, let the series languished, became manic and quit Denoel. The book and series languished there for a year or two until another editor finally took over, remade the series as he saw it, and dropped me and several of the other authors.
So, Charles Scribner IV was prophetic (until I finally finished the book and self-published last year).
"(It’s kind of like trying to explain, in 100 words or so, why you didn’t fall in love with someone you briefly dated.)"
So. I teach screenwriting. One of the topics that comes up all the time is what to do with "notes." Studio notes, workshop notes, trusted friend notes, parental notes. Because my own impulse re notes has always been contradictory: (1) **** these notes; and (2) oh my god if I do everything they say then they will buy it/make it/love me whooooo! And I know that the only way to make the work better is to be clear-sighted about its strengths and weaknesses, so ignoring notes from smart people sounds like it's probably a bad idea. We have to respect the true notes and repel the false ones. But. . . how?
Early in my career, when I was first sending scripts out, I would get these thoughtful rejections that explained the "reasons" they were saying no. And I would think, great, if I go and fix these things, they'll buy it. So I would try to go fix the things. And then I would resubmit. And they would come back at me with a bunch of new things to fix. Round and round. It took me awhile to realize that the reasons were disconnected from the rejection. They read it. They realized they didn't want it. The reasons (or at least the articulated reasons) came after.
I started thinking of it like a break up. And this is the analogy I use with my students. Your significant other breaks up with you. And you make the mistake of asking why. And they give you five reasons. And you take the reasons to heart and go away and work on yourself and fix those five things. Then you go back to them and say "ALL FIXED CAN WE GET BACK TOGETHER NOW?" And the answer is no. WHY? Five new reasons.
But the real reason is just because they don't want to be with you anymore.
You still have to consider their stated reasons, because not to is to risk being an ass. You want to be clear-eyed about your own failings. That's the only way to get better, to make the work better, etc. But . . . in terms of the specific reaction to the specific notes, you kind of have to disconnect cause and effect.
The other thing your post is making me think of is this thing that film editor and genius Walter Murch says in his insanely great book In the Blink of an Eye, which is about film editing but is so brilliant and wise that it's basically a writing/storytelling craft book. In the book, he talks about getting feedback from test/preview audiences. He's addressing the thing where preview audiences say they don't like a certain scene and so the production cuts out or alters the scene and it kills the whole movie. What he argues is that you have to listen to the note from the audience (they don't like the scene) but you need to be careful about doing the thing they suggest to fix it (get rid of the scene). I'm sure I'm getting this all slightly wrong because I'm going from memory and it's been awhile -- but I think he calls it the "principle of referred pain."
You go to the doctor with a pain in your elbow. You want your elbow fixed. The doctor doesn't just leap to cutting into your elbow. He might realize that the pain in your elbow is being caused by, say, a pinched nerve in your back. So he makes or suggests a back-related change, and the pain in your elbow disappears.
Yes, this is really good advice for writing workshops too - more valuable to know the "where" of what is wrong than the "how to fix it" part. I sometimes say it would be perfect if, instead of notes, every reader produced a sort of color-coded response printout - RED for "great, right with you," all the way down to....some other color for "I'm done, have checked out." Seeing that, especially from 5 or 6 good readers, the writer would know a really valuable thing...
I do a kind of watered down version of that in my workshops; I assign each student one of their peer's scripts to "mark up." They are allowed to make two kinds of marks: a check (I LIKE THIS) and a question mark (I am lost here; I don't understand this; I am confused). And NO explanations. The writers get their marked-up drafts and can ask questions of the marker-upper if need be. I thought the question marks would require explanation, but they rarely do. Students say the noteless mark-ups are frequently more useful than the articulated feedback in the room.
As a writer, working with studio notes, I always got the most out of actually seeing the old-timey mogul/producer/bossman's copy of the script with their impatient scrawl in it, just big checks where things worked and big red slashes through entire scenes they hated, and angry question marks over things they didn't get. That was information I could use. (Sadly, you almost never get to see those documents. Instead you got the polite but vague notes memo: "While we feel this draft goes a long way toward. . .")
I love this idea, too. Honestly, I always want to know what's working and what's not in my stories, but I don't want to hear how someone else would write it.
Love this color-coded idea. When I teach I give notes (and encourage my students) to make notes on the first read of exactly what their reaction is in real-time, because I think it trains those inner five to sit up and speak up before the "oh now I get what she meant on page 1" revision of the reading experience that robs the writer of the impression she's making on the page.
I love this color-coded idea.
The comments about workshopping bring up a question I’d like to ask. If a scene or portion of a story has no feeling or intensity, can a reader ask the writer to simply express, in spoken conversation, what she wanted to say in that scene? Once a friend asked me to read a scene in which an adopted young woman was speaking to the mother who adopted her. Reading it, something was missing, so I asked my friend to tell me what she wanted to say in the scene. She spoke for a long time, with deep feeling, so I asked if she could write what she’d just told me. Is that an acceptable way to critique?
Why not?
Why not? I've said it to only two friends, but each time, they didn't seem to know what to do with my comment. Perhaps, they were afraid of putting into writing the emotional content they had poured out to a confidante. Or maybe they were incapable of digging deeply into those dark places inside oneself--a type of courage I believe a skillful writer needs. I believe those writers lacked the courage, or ability, because their writing didn't hold my interest. Right now, I'm reading Gogol's The Portrait, a story that seems to speak to another form of artistic courage which allows the innermost self to shine through in one's work, and I'm taking it to heart.
I love your post. I also teach - grad students- (writer/directors) and it’s so true / part of what we’re hoping to impart is how to translate script notes, as you suggest - how to get to the cause behind the symptoms. One upside of our program is that students get different (sometimes wildly different) notes from faculty of equal measure - they’re baffled at first and though it may seem counterintuitive it forces them to decipher what fits and what doesn’t. And in sync with counsel George has given - to suss out the heart of their vision for the script/movie.
Yay for your parents driving across the whole country! Have a great time with them.
And thanks for writing about rejection, it’s the icicle stab that can never not hurt. I appreciate your words, especially on the difficult jobs of editors and how the writer might choose to react to the rejection. I’m getting ready to query agents for a novel and expect lots of rejection, particularly in light of the challenges to publishing I keep reading about. For years I’ve submitted to literary magazines, and the 85 percent rejection rate seems accurate. Some never bother to reply, some send one-line rejections many months later, and some send kind notes. I get it, most of them are understaffed, underfunded, and doing it for the love of it. I don’t take it personally, but it’s still not easy. A few small successes have buoyed me. But mostly, it’s the writing that buoys me, I love it too much and can’t stop.
I have taken a different tack to build up my writer’s platform. It’s a gamble and I hope it’s valid. There are a lot of less well-known magazines hungry for content, which means less rejection! Maybe my story or article won’t reach the wide readership or literary agents as it might in the big-league magazines, but I get to build up a loyal following over time. That counts for something, I hope. In the past two years I had 30 humor pieces published in humor mags you’ve probably never heard of, (have been studying with the founder of The Onion) and I now write regularly for a small regional publication (both humor and non-humor) and it’s a blast. A couple of my stories got picked up by larger publications, and one went mildly viral. That was a thrill. Occasionally I’ll submit to a big leaguer, but mostly it’s small publications, because they don’t reject as much. On the one hand you could say I’m aiming low, but on the other, a literary agent who’s considering my query could look at my website and browse through lots of published pieces. I don’t have anything in The New York Times, or The Sun, or Granta, or The New Yorker, but I do have more than 60 articles published. Does this strategy make sense? I hope so.
Here's a similar question (Is this where people ask questions—in the comments?) I wrote a short piece I really love. It's not exactly "a story." It's full of detail, it has emotion and movement, but not a thorough beginning/ middle/ end. It's a slice not a whole pie. Maybe two slices. I asked for feedback from a magazine rejection (paid for advice actually) I was curious. The advice was: It's lovely, but it's not a story, make it one." So...then I read Sam Shepard's collection called Great Dream Of Heaven. Amazing, intricate, near perfect writing, I loved it. But 90% of his stories, by conventional definition, are not stories. The pieces are mostly very brief. They don't have beginning/ middle/ end. You want more when he's done. You're dying to know what happened to these people, but he cuts the cord way before most anyone else would. And yet there are all the rave reviews about his work. They are a slice or two. And goddammit that pie tastes good. So what's a guy to do? When is a story a story? And does it matter? And who's asking? In your opinion, how much "plot" (or dramatic unfolding) is needed?
Sam Shepard is famous. He could smash a bug onto a page, and his story would be published.
Ha. Exactly. Tom Hanks ditto. I love him as an actor but I am not reading him as a writer. Love the typewriter collection though.
Hi Joel. You asked if people ask questions in the comments. If you have a new question for George, you can write him at storyclubwithgeorge@gmail.com
sorry Mary, I meant to reply to the original poster and I replied to you. Then trying to explain it to you, I replied to myself. What a mess I am.
I got a kick out of this at your expense. (Messy people are my favorite)
Same!
There’s a great story in there, Jane.
that's what I was just thinking
Most short stories are slices, slices of life or of a life. But still they need a beginning, middle and end. Many of Sam Shepard's pieces do have a beginning, middle and end (to my reading).
sorry Mary I meant to reply to the original poster. I will do that.
thanks for answering that question! I was wondering too :) :)
I would suggest that you figure out what each editor or editorial board considers a story to be, and send yours to the ones who appreciate it for how it is expressed. But maybe the advice you got from the magazine editors you paid is still helpful. Maybe the Sam Shepard stories are short short or flash, and therefore a different structure than a standard length story. Since he was primarily a playwright, he would likely write a spare and poetic story, finding the essence in dialogue, setting and theme. Anyway, you may be writing good slices and sending them to people who like the whole pie.
When is a story a story is a great question. For me the beginning middle end thing is less helpful than Freytag's pyramid because it reminds us that there has to be some escalation (always be escalating, isn't that a Saunders-ism?).
It's very hard to get full resolution in a short story though some (maybe Tenth of December?) manage it. By contrast, Raymond Carver's stories are almost all slices, he leaves you wanting more but also he cuts off the slice when you know enough, you understand (if you ponder a while) why he chose to show you this significant, slim section of a character's life.
So there's no simple answer I know of, but I reckon a story should be propulsive and should matter, there should probably be tension and change and maybe some, probably partial, resolution.
One more example: George's The Falls is helpful here because it goes full throttle on the escalation, right to the last sentence. Hell of an adrenaline rush. And the story answers its own central question (will he intervene) without necessarily giving the reader the resolution they crave.
Very nicely put! Carver always seems more "complete" than Sam Shepard...very thoughtful response, thanks
I've not read any Shepard - sounds amazing, but painful (as someone who definitely craves resolution!). I will seek him out.
Most short stories are slices. They don't require back story or they require minimal back story. they are an in, tell the story and an out. But they do require a beginning, middle and end. And to my reading of Sam Shepard's stories, most have a beginning, middle and end.
Could the beginning, middle and end exist in the mind of a reader?
Yes and No.
Great answer. I will have to look for the Shepard collection. (A loom of Shepard pieces.)
Jealous. Verdi’s Requiem was the first piece of classical music I bought after seeing it performed at university. Dies Irae blew the doors off the place. Wonderful to hear good news in the arts; I was saddened to hear that Center Theater Group in LA recently paused a chunk of their programming. Good on you for keeping up your support.