Today I got a rejection that especially stung. I didn’t realize how much I was hoping for an acceptance until the rejection showed up and I felt it all over my body.
I’ve been getting a lot of rejections lately.
In 2024, my New Years Resolution was getting at least one or two stories accepted by lit mags. I ended up abandoning that resolution promptly. I think I only wrote one story, which was rejected by the only magazine that might have published it, and decided to go do something else.
I’m not sure why late-2025 turned into my year of short stories, more than a year after I forgot that resolution.
Writing short stories has been nice, anyway. I haven’t finished a book this year yet, besides the one I published in January (which took me five years to prepare). I’m chugging along on one, but I have a sort of…conflicted relationship with it. I refuse to give up, even though it keeps making me angry. I’m approaching its end so slowly.
this book is almost exactly 66,600 words at the moment, which perfectly captures how we are mortal enemies. book hates me, i hate book, burn in hell.— SM Reine of Cawdor (@smreine.itch.io) August 24, 2025 at 4:04 PM
That’s not to say I’ve been unproductive. I did a bunch of reissues to celebrate the 13th anniversary of one series; I’ve been writing for an online magazine; I still write movie reviews sometimes.
I’ve also been doing lots of art.
A big part of that 13th anniversary project has been doing oodles of drawings. I illustrated my characters and some scenes from the books, sharing what I imagined when I wrote them.
I’ve gotten a lot better at drawing, although I struggle to do more complicated pieces. It’s hard taking the time to build a drawing up piece by piece, using all the technical skills and planning that good art demands.
When I draw, I really like to just sit down and draw.
The methodical approach to art has reminded me that a great many things in life require building piece by piece.
Life requires practicing skills you’re bad at until you’re good at them.
It also demands Doing The Thing a lot. In art, it’s called “pencil time.” You just have to spend so many hours throwing yourself at art before you can expect yourself to be any good at it, and I think this is true of writing, but also the career of publishing.
The fact is that I have not been writing or submitting enough to get rejected the last few years, and I think the lack of rejections has been a problem.
I had two books fail on submission to traditional publishing. My agent loved them and believed in them, but the two of us were alone in this matter.
It stings to try so hard and get so far, when in the end, it doesn’t even matter. (Cue angsty music.)
My big slowdown in writing–when I used to write 6-10 books every single year–is only partially attributable to those books failing, but…it’s definitely some factor in the whole thing.
Because some rejections feel very routine, but some of them really hurt.
The short story rejection I got today hurt because I was holding some hope for that collection in particular, but I was also cultivating a lot of doubt since I sent in the story. I was pretty sure what I wrote wasn’t exactly what they wanted. It didn’t have enough focus on the unifying theme for the collection.
You’d think that suspecting a rejection is coming makes it better, but it does not.
All the other rejections I’ve received lately don’t really bother me. I like the stories I’m shopping around quite a lot. I also know it’s an industry with narrow odds and a strong element of subjectivity.
I’m not gifted at convincing people to read what I’ve written. I’m a very good writer! But that social element of writing a beginning that hooks, in convincing them I fit some narrow window of expectations, is generally absent from my work.
(It was a miracle I got an agent who loves my stuff, and even she remarks upon how weird my books are.)
(I tend to regard my weirdness as a positive thing, as an artist, but less-positive from a commercial standpoint.)
Ultimately, more rejections are good because it means I’m giving myself more opportunity to fail.
I am trying to build a new career that looks very different from my old career, when I wrote 6-10 books a year, sold directly to readers, and burned myself out with the hustle.
I’m going piece by piece now, looking for some more sustainable route toward reaching readers that I also find more creatively fulfilling.
Right now, my eggs are in a lot of little baskets, or I’m sowing a lot of seeds, or whatever metaphor we wanna use. It’s hard to know what will turn into something, if anything does.
The hope is good, though. Even if it means that hope sometimes turns into hurt.
