Maybe we should have a little talk about rejection. Every author goes through rejection at every stage in their career. Rejections from small, online literary magazines, rejections from big literary magazines, rejections from The New Yorker (of course), rejections from literary agents, rejections from publishers, rejections from cooler people in high school and college. Rejections galore. It’s a part of the writer’s life and should be embraced (except for those rejections by cooler people in high school and college–those you should weep over and console yourself with Ben & Jerry’s and Meg Ryan movies). How to deal with rejections in the literary world? That should be relatively easy; it’s all about venue.
I would recommend dealing with literary rejections the same way you might deal with romantic rejection: by taking those rejections and posting them all over the Internet for the world to see. Just kidding. Don’t do that. Seriously, don’t. You’ve got better things to do with your time. No, what you should do is take that rejection as a learning opportunity, and then move on.
Unlike romantic rejection, literary rejection is not meant to be a personal attack against you. It is simply a way for editors to say that your story (or poem or article or novel) is not right for their publication, and that you should try placing it elsewhere. If you are serious about writing, you will come to learn that everyone likes different things, including editors, and they will accept or reject a piece solely because they think it is not a fit for their particular publication, not because it does not have literary merit.
One thing I am assuming here is that you are submitting work that should or could be published somewhere, in some venue. I do believe there are stories that don’t deserve to be published, like your ten volume fantasy epic about a bodice-ripping paladin, or the last six books in the Sword of Truth series. That said, there are a few things you can do to avoid instant rejection. Like I said, rejection is fine, as long as it’s based on the publication to which you are submitting. The New Yorker is rejecting your short story because it isn’t a right fit for them (and because they hate you a little), but not because your story is “bad.” There are, however, things that will get you rejected without an editor even reading your story to the end. And these things should be avoided at all costs.
1) Poor grammar/spelling – This is basic stuff. Don’t misspell any words, and use proper grammar (unless, of course, you can break the rules of grammar to wonderful effect). Poor grammar and misspellings are the sign of an amateur writer, and are sure to get you rejected without any sort of basis on the literary merit of your story or poem.
2) Failing to adhere to submission guidelines – Again, very basic. If The New Yorker says “email submissions only,” don’t send them your poem packet via snail mail. If they say “paste your story into the body of the email,” don’t send it as a Word attachment. There is one caveat to this rule, and it is a submission guideline to which you should never adhere: many places prohibit simultaneous submissions. They want you to submit your story to them and them alone, and not to anyone else at the same time. This is straight up BS, and you should ignore it. I have yet to find a publication that has a way of telling whether you have submitted your story simultaneously or not, and you don’t really want to sit around and wait for six months while Granta works on your three-line rejection slip. Send out to multiple places at all times, regardless of what the guidelines say. You will benefit in the long run.
3) Boring/unengaging work – You’d think this would be obvious as well, but surprisingly it is not, especially to the writer of a given story/poem. Often we writers are too invested in our own material to judge it critically, and we can miss basic things (like engaging plot and character depth). If you send in a ten-page story, and it doesn’t get going until page three, you’re going to get rejected every time. You’ve got to hook your reader, even in literary fiction, which carries an unwarranted reputation for stuffiness, overintellectualization, and density. I know, I know, you’re thinking, “But those stories in The New Yorker are boring from beginning to end and yet they get published!” Yes, yes they do, because they are good stories, and while they’re not formulaic Dan Brown page-turning pulp, they do often work on multiple levels of consciousness that your bodice-ripping-paladin-fantasy-epic does not.
Finding the right venue for your particular work is probably the best way to accelerate the process of publishing. I’ve written stories that have been rejected 50+ times because I’ve sent them to the wrong venues (*cough cough* The New Yorker *cough cough*), and I’ve also had stories accepted on the very first submission, because I knew the story was a perfect fit for that particular venue. So don’t be discouraged when you get that rejection slip in the mail/email. Stick it in a folder somewhere as a memento and send your work out again to a proper venue. It will greatly increase your chances of publication.
Note: The New Yorker is rarely a “proper venue.”
