Tales from the Mothership

In my ‘About’ section, there’s a short list of of publications who have been kind enough to publish my writing. I’m sure my list won’t look like much to more prolific writers of short fiction. I have to say, though, that every single story listed there has received at least a dozen rejections, except for one, which I wrote for a particular anthology and was accepted on the first attempt (the only time that has ever happened).

While my pile of acceptances grows slowly (I am not prolific with short fiction and spend most of my writing time on longer projects), my rejections are many.

Rejection can hurt, especially when you’re first starting out as a writer. You pour so much of your heart into every piece of writing and often you don’t get much more than, ‘I’m sorry, this wasn’t for us.’ Not that I’m complaining about that. Having seen the slush-pile side of the equation, I can understand that editors don’t always have time to respond personally. Although, the two publications I’ve read for both ask slush readers to say something about each piece we reject so that they can send our comments to the writers. And I have had some lovely personal rejections in the past (thank you, Andy Cox, for your gentle let-downs and encouragement back in the late 90s!).

Rejections can also be a catalyst. If a piece does the rounds of publications I think would be a good match and doesn’t get as much as a nibble, I may look at it again and see whether it needs fixing, or transforming, or even discarding. Personal rejections, as mentioned above, can be a learning experience. It was a personal rejection on a novel, from a major publisher, that set me on course for the MFA. I’d been so close to acceptance, they said, and they gave me reasons for ultimately saying no (my pacing, mostly). I decided then that I wanted to learn from successfully published writers and so I applied for a student loan and a place at Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University, and I learned from excellent writers like Nicholas Royle, Gregory Norminton and Rachel Genn. It’s not for everyone, and not every writer needs to study for an MFA. It’s a personal choice.

Sometimes, rejection can be a good thing. I’ve sent out pieces before they were ready and only realised later, after several rejections. I’ve read through the stories that were rejected and thought, ‘I can do better.’ And I’ve improved them, and gone on for them to be accepted elsewhere (often somewhere that is a better fit for the story). Or, I’ve realised that they weren’t actually a story at all, and more of a thought experiment, and developed them further.

I’ve learned to take rejection in my stride. It still stings, especially when it’s a story I really thought had a good chance with one of my ‘dream publications’. But I’ve learned not to hope too much. I can’t, if I want to carry on writing for publication. It would be too demoralising to pin the whole of my heart to every single submission. So, I tell myself it doesn’t matter if they say no and only let myself get emotional when they say yes.