My year in rejections, publications, despair, and hope
Some writers aim to get 100 rejections in a year. Comedy writer Emily Winter set that as her goal this year -- and she succeeded! It's a much more attainable goal, than, say, getting published in the New York Times, an accomplishment that mostly isn't up to you. And along the way, you get some acceptances. I didn't set a rejection goal for 2018, but I did earn 32 from magazines, 24 from literary agents, and one from a grant, for a total of 57 rejections (58 if you count the piece I had under review at Tin House when they announced they were shutting down the magazine).
Another way of measuring a year in writing is word count. Though I have no idea how many words I wrote in aimless rants, half-baked ideas, and shitty first drafts, I netted about 35,000 words in polished pieces. Only about half of those words have been published, but the rest constitute essays that are either slated for publication or currently out for review. Not a bad haul. (My friend who writes travel mysteries under the pseudonym J.A. Jernay would not be impressed; I think J.A. writes that many words a month.) I also sent out more than 20 of these newsletters, which total between 15,000 and 20,000 additional words.
My main goal is to contribute to public conversations about work, religion, and education, so I also measure my year by publications. To that end, here's everything I published in 2018. The three pieces marked with asterisks are my favorites:
Please, Millennials, Don’t Destroy Us Just Yet, The New Republic, March 7, 2018
Still in a Work Place, Notre Dame Magazine, Spring 2018
A Tale of Two Commencements, Notre Dame Magazine (blog), April 2, 2018
Here’s What Happened When NRA Members Encountered a Prayer Vigil Outside Their Convention, America, May 10, 2018 *
On Pilgrimage in Texas, in Search of Light and Color (review essay on Ellsworth Kelly’s “Austin,” the Rothko Chapel, and the Chapel of Thanksgiving), America, July 9, 2018 *
The Bible Passage at the Heart of the House’s Punitive Farm Bill, Religion Dispatches, September 11, 2018
Why Dallas Republicans Skipped an Interfaith Forum, Religion Dispatches, October 16, 2018.
Try to Lower the Stakes of the Job-Interview Dinner, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 22, 2018.
Is Your Job Necessary? (review essay on working life), America, October 24, 2018
When Work and Meaning Part Ways, The Hedgehog Review, Fall 2018 *
All Work, No Ethic, The Hedgehog Review (blog), November 5, 2018
Vocation and the Realities of Burnout, Vocation Matters (blog), November 13, 2018
A quick appeal: You can read all of these articles for free. But it costs money to produce them. No one writes or edits to get rich. We do it to inform, delight, and provoke you. That doesn't mean we should have to do it for free or not at all, though. No one wants to pay for what they read. I don't want to pay for what I read! But to a large extent, I do. I also don't want to pay for an oil change, or for trash pickup. The auto mechanics and the trash collectors (rightly) take coercive measures to make you pay or go without their services. Writers and editors don't -- at least, not quite so extensively. We make our work available for free as an act of goodwill, and in the hope that you'll like what you read and decide to subscribe to what's often a small but excellent magazine.
It's not easy to write so many words and endure so much rejection in the effort to publish a dozen essays. I get down about how it often seems I'm writing into a void, and how I quit a slowly-dying industry only to get into a rapidly-dying one. And I'm 43, for crying out loud. I'm new to this but too old to be considered "emerging." I never qualified for a "40 under 40" list. I keep refreshing my email inbox to see if maybe I'll find (an) acceptance. Nope. Nothing, yet again.
But despair doesn't get the final word. I want to close out this year's newsletters with words of of hope from Kristin Dombek that help get me through:
It is not true that you are unusually bad at living, or have some fatal flaw that keeps you from finding the work you should do. It is not true that you have it worse than others, or that your luck, as it is right now, is your luck forever. ... It is not true that someone’s rejection of your work will erase your own worth. It is not true that it is possible to get anywhere new except by failing deeply, many, many times. It is not true that there is some story of your life you somehow failed to find, other than the one you have. It is not true there is some better story you risk losing if you make any decisions at all. Think about it: there is only one you, versus an impossible economy. It is not true that how things are is how things have to be. It is not true that without these beliefs to which you have attached yourself, you will die. It is not true that racism will be forever, or that 21st-century capitalism and technology are somehow more specially eviscerating of all good human potential than any era before. It is not true that the world is ending, unless we let it end. Come on.
...It is not true that if you haven’t written your real, planet-changing screenplay by age 40, or 50, or 60, or 70, even if you’ve written a pile of shit so far, that you can’t and won’t do it now. It might be true that you’ll only know how to write it because you’ve written a pile of shit so far. So choose the more interesting truth: hate everything witless and shallow, immoral, and cruel, but love everything that’s taught you to know the difference, and use all this to write a better movie than you have yet, and than we have ever seen. You know as well as I do how it will be done: one page at a time, like everything else, with the help of your PAALs [friends in politics, art, academia, and literature]. Wear a seat belt until you are finished. I for one will be here, waiting to see it. You’re not done yet; it’s time to get to work.
(The full essay is behind a paywall, but you can subscribe here!)
So in 2019 my only resolution is to choose this more interesting truth, and keep writing. I'm grateful that you keep reading.
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