Why We Should Aim for Rejection in 2020
Shelby Hinte’s publication rejection list
As the new year approaches, many of us are reflecting on the past twelve months of our lives. We are likely reviewing our goals and intentions that we set for the year back in January. We might be celebrating having accomplished these goals or admonishing ourselves for having fallen short (I know for myself I am usually speed reading the last few books in my “to read” pile so I can hit my annual 40-book goal before it strikes midnight on January first). December for me is typically a crazy month. Between finishing up end of the semester lesson plans and attending holiday work parties to baking cookies for my stepdaughter’s class and making sure “Santa” doesn’t disappoint, I often feel like I am on autopilot. But then winter break commences right in the middle of all that momentum and I have two weeks to reset. In the bay area, it tends to be rainy and cold around this time of year which is a perfect combination for staying bundled up inside with a good book or a notebook and pen. It is also perfect weather for thinking about the year to come.
This coming year, one goal I am setting for myself, as I have for the last three years, is to embrace and collect rejection. 100 rejections to be exact. Since 2017 I have been actively collecting rejection letters as part of my writing practice. This collection of mine began while I was part of a San Francisco writing group that encouraged one another to earn 100 rejections a year. We had a leaderboard (the winner was whoever got rejected the most by the end of the year) and every rejection we received we forwarded to the whole group and members would say congratulations. By the end of the year we all racked up more rejection than any one person typically cares to make public, but each of us also had at least one publication, award, and/or a reading to add to our list of accomplishments.
I have never met the goal of receiving 100 rejections in a year (and no, not because I am constantly flooded with adoration and acceptance, but because it takes a lot of work to submit to 100+ places in only 365 days). 2020 is going to be the year I do it. I am finally going to be at the top of the leaderboard with 100 rejections. This goal is especially important to me for next year because 2019 was my worst rejection year yet. A measly 20 rejections. This was in large part because I submitted my work much less than I usually do. At the beginning of the year I received a handful of “almosts” which are essentially really encouraging rejection letters, but ultimately still not publications, for a short story collection I finished at the end of 2018. Before submitting my book for publication, I had only ever sent off poetry and short stories. I wasn’t prepared for how different rejection would feel for an entire collection. It hurt and it discouraged me from sending my work out. Now that the year is coming to a close and I only have 20 rejections under my belt I can’t help but feel as though I shut myself off from a lot of potential opportunities. I let subjective opinions, taste, and timing slow down my hustle because I didn’t want to feel bad about myself. I was equating the worth of my writing with publication. I was forgetting that there are many reasons responsible for a piece not getting picked up for publication, many of which do not necessarily reflect the worth of the piece (I have seen handfuls of wonderful short stories and essays from my peers get rejected by certain magazines before they eventually were published in the magazines or journals that best suited them).
Shelby Hinte’s rejection list part 2
As human beings, rejection is an unavoidable reality. I think this is especially true for writers. While most writers don’t come out and say their exact tally of rejections, many will at least make mention of a time or times when they just couldn’t find a home for their work (I recently read an interview where Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists, said her first novel was rejected by more than 20 presses). This unavoidable part of being a writer is why I think normalizing rejection, and how we talk about it, should be part of my practice. It helps that my stepdaughter regularly reminds me that “JK Rowling got told to keep her day job and she is like a billionaire now, so you will probably make at least a million some day.” Yet another reminder that rejection isn’t something to be ashamed of.
Striving for rejection means that you must always be working. Every rejection leads to revisiting the work and looking at it with fresh eyes. If not revising, then generating, because you can’t get rejected if you haven’t written anything. Striving for rejection also results in a sort of emotional conditioning. Initial disappointment must be followed by acceptance, growth, and forward motion towards the next potential rejection. One writer I know says that every time she gets a rejection letter she instantly does a quick read through of the piece, makes edits that appear clear to her in a way that she couldn’t see before, and then sends it off for consideration to at least 2 other journals. Another writer says she does a free write every time she gets a rejection and then later pulls from the free write in order to generate a poem. Both these responses are useful exercises in turning rejection into an essential part of the artistic process. These positive perspectives, like the leaderboard and forwarding a new rejection letter to your writer friends for kudos, are effective ways of reconstructing how we interpret and process what initially feels negative.
This shifting of perspective is imperative when it comes to putting yourself out into the world as a creative. This month I am finishing up revisions on my novel and so as we enter the new year, I have a nice stack of pages to send into the world. I say bring on the rejections, 2020. At least 100 of them. All it takes is one yes. It doesn’t matter if you heard 100 noes before it.
About Shelby Hinte
Shelby Hinte is a writer and educator living in the Bay Area. She received her MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University where she was the recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Graduate award. She has been a contributing food and beverage writer for Edible Santa Fe. Her fiction has appeared in Vagabond Lit, Witness Magazine, Hobart, Quiet Lightning's Sparkle + Blink, decomP magazinE, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel about women and vortexes in the desert.
