Spoiler Just sold Beyond the Sea to Sci Phi Journal! Hell yeah ! This time the story was only rejected 10 times before the acceptance. Progress! Haha.
I guess I have a , kind of. I won The Writer’s Workshop’s first Write Track spotlight, on flawed characters. They provide feedback and let you revise for submission again along with winners of their other spotlights, for a grand prize. They limit to 15 entries for each spotlight so there wasn’t massive competition but still nice to win. My story wasn’t published but they published my name and some comments from the judges etc, and they’ve automatically marked it as an acceptance on Duotrope.
Received some more No Thank Yous this week. 87-day form from Vast Chasm, 81-day from The Ex-Puritan, 27-day from Flash Point, and one more agent rejection. Probably won't be getting many more agent rejections; the outstanding ones will likely be ignored. We're up to 33 for the year !
Collected a few more rejections. A 107-day "hope to read something new from you soon," from Apex, 32-day "no thank you" from Haven Speculative, and a slightly devastating 197-day rejection from Small Wonders. I'd made the shortlist back at the end of September and I felt very confident that they would publish my story. Alas. Still nice to get that close, I suppose. Oh, and another agent rejection. Rejections for the year: 37
Just thought I'd put this out there because I've been thinking about it. I struggle with rejection. I want to get into the magazines etc. BUT....Does anybody besides the writers actually read the magazines? I'm not talking about things like the New Yorker. I'm talking the lit mags and genre mags. There might be a couple that the general reader actually reads (although I bet even the big ones are small readership outside of writers). But really: are we just writing for some writers? And even the writers who read them--do they read them because they WANT to? Or do they read them just to see if they would be a good fit to send their work? In other words: Beyond maybe getting credits for a CV to send to an agent for future publication of a book, What the hell are we doing?
For genre publications, the vast majority of readers are just that - readers. If you get into more niche stuff, like say poetry, then you're probably getting writers making up a fair chunk of the readership. I get feeling like there sure are a lot of writers out there, like when I submit something and it shows me being number 734 in the queue. But I don't read much short fiction these days outside of the forums - a lot of that time I used to spend reading is now spent writing. https://neil-clarke.com/busting-a-myth/
Got some more, as prolific submitters do. A rare 1-day form rejection from PodCastle, a stunning 740-day rejection from Fairy Tale Review (they live!), a 32-day rejection from a Fission anthology, a 64-day rejection from an indie pub, and two agent rejections. No no no no no no no no thanks. And that's fine. Just gotta keep going. Nothing ventured, nothing gained as I always say. We're up to 43 rejections for the year now.
This Rejection thread is evidence that a large percentage of writers share your frustration. An article that I wrote and managed to get published was my answer to your "What the hell are we doing?" Perhaps it will help you answer your question... https://www.authormagazine.org/articles/2025/1/dean
New Edge Sword & Sorcery just recently raised $47,000 over on Backerkit. I can’t imagine all of that’s from writers. So there are definitely some magazines outside of the top-tier ones who have a dedicated non-writer fanbase.
A few more trickled in this week. Still got a few dozen out there but they've been slow in getting back to me. Another rejection from Analog (so hard to get in there!), an indie pub form letter, and two agent no thank yous. We're up to 47 on the year now. I've got some time off coming up, so I'll be carpet bombing genre magazines with my shit again, along with doing a lotta writing. Edit: Missed one. A 68-day form rejection from Fantasy Magazine, which is almost triple the normal amount of time they reject. Maybe they were thinking about it some. We're at 48.
Got three agent rejections this week, along with a 1-day personal rejection from Tableware Magazine. It might be the worst personal rejection I've received, but I didn't take it personally and just had a laugh about it. It seems like editors are not really into my story about a lovesick, jealous anthropomorphic bar of soap. That's 51 for 2025 now.
Hehe well if you're interested, it was my entry to the September short story contest. I didn't change it all that much afterwards; went through it a few more times and it only increased by a dozen words or so. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/september-short-story-contest.177451/
I quite enjoyed it! Better than anything I could have written about a bar of soap. I like the imagination.
Got a whopping 214-day rejection from Grain Magazine, along with two more agent rejections. 54 for the year.
