The other day all I did during my 6 hour layover to Seattle was to submit my work - it was the best time spent ever on an airport. Although I got my fastest rejection ever (within few hours) it was still fulfilling. Thanks Shaelin for stressing this point over and over again.
This video came at the perfect time. The first time I got a rejection, I felt like such a failure. I stopped writing for a few days, but after that, submitted the piece to another magazine. It got rejected again, and I submitted it to another journal. It never got accepted and I stopped sending it to magazines because I know it needs more work and that it will take me a long time to get to it. But recently, I've started submitting poetry and I've noticed how my attitude towards submissions have changed. I am less worried about getting a rejection than I was before (it still hurts a bit but I'm proud of whatever little progress I have). I hope one day I'll see the word accepted on submittable or in a mail or something and feel like it was all worth it!
This might be kind of petty, but I keep a folder full of rejection letters. Printing out the rejection email and adding it to the folder helps me focus on the amount of submissions I've done, rather than whether or not they were published. If the goal is just to submit polished work to as many places as possible, then no matter the outcome I can feel good about how much work I've put in!
i like!! kinda resembles a FERNANDO-PESSOA-idea: art´s just about knitting a piece together before tearing it right after..^^ wanne become part of a non-rejetive-communal-pour-out-project: th-cam.com/video/ZvUKil3NMHo/w-d-xo.html
I've had a ton of rejections and one of them was just because the agent was already working on something similar so sometimes it's a lot about luck so I think it's really important to stay motivated ❤️
Take heart, young writers. You can't beat a tryer. Kafka wielded his axe against the frozen sea (which he said was the purpose of writing) and most of his work was unpublished in his lifetime.
sooo true!! so let´s all turn into cockroach (like Gregor) and switch back to collaboration rather than "frozen" individuals: th-cam.com/video/ZvUKil3NMHo/w-d-xo.html
Great video, wish I had heard it decades ago. I find the best way around this problem is realizing that "rejection" is such a loaded term, that if we just replace it with "not accepted," a lot of the big issue goes away. If we reinterpret every rejection notice as, "Not accepted because we can't accept 12,000 pieces a month. Thanks for sending" ... then we have a much less dramatic response. The term "rejection" is so often connected with relationships, where it is intensely painful, that we are setting ourselves up by even using the term.
When a door is shut it's because it was the wrong door! Everything happens for a reason and rejection is often a blessing in disguise that you do see later down the line! Rejection is protection! I am not a professional writer but on my life path as a Coach and Spiritual Teacher as well as Medium. I have learnt the above! Keep on knocking and listen to your intuition as when the right door opens then you will know you are on the right path!!!
Side note: I love the fact that you said 'story'. Saying 'novelist' doesn't fit for me. I think 'story-teller' fits much better. Still need the 'writer' part but, yes I prefer story.
As a (former) professional musician, I’ve gotten so used to rejection with auditions, so I just submit work I love when possible, email professors as much as possible when needed, etc. and even if I don’t get a response (not even a rejection) I’m like “that’s fine!” But if I get a positive response I’m like “awesome that makes me feel good”
That being said, with music, I knew I couldn’t audition to places like Juliard or Curtis, and I apply that same logic with writing. I’m not a super experienced writer, and it probably won’t be my primary focus after undergrad, so I won’t be applying to places like the Iowa Writers Workshop for my MFA or anything lol
I can apply this to art competitions I have been rejected by, usually in the first round. I've been painting for years and can draw most things proportionately from my imagination. Someone from my art class had painstakingly copied an image onto canvas using the grid method. She's new at art and can't draw quickly or intuitively but got much further in the competition than I did. The submission fees do make it sting though. I reassure myself that if I wasn't any better than a novice, I wouldn't be have a career as a freelance illustrator.
Submission fees are for suckers and losers. There are far, far too many excellent markets, and even contests that do not have submission fees, and this applies to painting, as well as writinmg. If you have to pay to get your work looked at or read, you'll still be a loser, even if you win a contest.
Thanks! ❤❤❤ This is totally what i need to hear. I dont think rejection has been particularly painful for me but it does cause me to self-reject a lot of my work by not even submitting
I'm sorry if I am too late for commenting on this video, but I just wanted to thank you for giving me the motivation to submit my work elsewhere after getting declined. I honestly cannot thank you enough.
Excellent video. Very useful information. And i agree with your point in not having dream agents. It just pedestals agents and makes rejections worse. They're human just like us. Treat them equally.
I wonder if there are any successful authors who haven't been rejected? I can't imagine there are any, at least not in modern times (I imagine the process was very different in the olden days)
Thank you for this. You are right it never ends and your motivation ideas are great. I also remember what Becket said. I also learned a lot working as a reader.
If you need more motivation than the love of writing, find another line of work. There are two words no writer should ever utter: "Motivation" and "inspiration". Both are excuses for procrastination, or outright laziness. The old saying that "Everyone wants to be a writer, but no one really wants to write" is true. If you aren't sitting down and writing at every possible opportunity simply because there is no other thing on earth you would rather be doing with your time, quit. Find something to do that fits this desire. But give up writing.
Thank you, I love your videos and this is so helpful! My favorite tips are: 1. Write and submit your best work. 2. Don't take things (especially rejections) personally. And as a children's book writer, I hear that in the children's book publishing industry, getting rejection letters is actually a "positive" because most rejections are conveyed by radio silence.
"Submit your best work" is nonsense. Only failures take this route. The writer has no clue what is or isn't his or her best work. You can slave over something for weeks, months, or years, and produce garbage. Or you can start and finish something in a day, and produce genius. The only possible way to know what is and isn't your best work is to submit it. Just finish it. I promise you, slaving for long periods over something, trying to get it to the point where YOU think it's your best, very seldom leads to more quality. More often than not, it leads to muddying up a good piece of work. You don't have to start and finish something in four hours, but if you can't start and finish it in a week, you will probably never be a success.
Joining Twitter was the best thing I've done for myself as a writer. It was such a reality check for rejections... I submitted to an inaugural issue of a new online magazine that I liked the vibes of just before the window closed and they posted they got 450 subscriptions! For this one little online journal that had never even published an issue! Imagine how many submissions high profile magazines get? It is SO not personal.
It is important to remember that people accept work not based on quality, but on what they think will make them the most money with the least amount of risk. Quality does play a factor, but there is all sort of marketing factors involved as well.
Since I was mostly talking from the perspective of literary magazines, in this case money really isn't a factor since most magazines don't make any profit! They mostly run as volunteer run projects or off grants and many issues are available for free. But it's definitely a factor in traditional publishing and securing a book deal for sure, trends and what's marketable have a lot of impact.
I do have an interesting perhaps helpful story for listeners on this. One time I did have all my eggs in one basket on a submission, I think it was my first ever and to the major mag of the genre, everything perfect, me an unknown but challenging for a position, and I was "all-in" on getting accepted. Long shot ... it came back "we want it." But then the process before it actually got printed went on for months of cancellations and delays, so long that it practically ruined the original "yes." So the moral of the story is that the publishing game does not revolve around our desires, and that the writing itself is the ultimate value of it.
It probably helps to be the kind of person who is a self-promoter, sort of like an old time blues musician who is so far out of the mainstream yet who succeeds due to his out-there personality.
The writer never knows how good or bad, how publishable of unpublishable, his or he r own work is. If writers knew this slush wouldn't be filled with horrible writing. It isn't the writer's job to judge quality. That's the editor's job, so a writer needs to take care of submitting, and allow the editor to do the job of judging quality. I can tell you this absolutely. The number one reason stories get rejected is because they're BAD. Horribly, terribly bad in every way. The number two reason is that while they may be well-written, they're the same old, same old, same old, same old plot, location, characters, "message", etc. every editor has seen hundreds, or thousands, of times. There's an old truism that remains true today, "Editors want something just like everything else, only DIFFERENT". If you can do this, your chances of a sale go way, way up, EVEN IF THE QUALITY OF YOUR WRITING REMAINS THE SAME. I know that truism sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. What it means is that you give the editor reasonably good writing, reasonably good structure, the right length, all the normal things that go into a story, but then give that editor a location that isn't being used by other writers, characters that are not the same ones editors see constantly, and dialogue that is real to the location and characters, and you'll be ahead of at least ninety percent of everything the editor will see that month, and maybe that year. Despite what so many advise, description is critical. If you can bring a new location and different characters alive, you will sell stories. The way to do this is to remember that writing is always a VISUAL art form. You must make the editor, and ordinary readers, SEE the location, see the action, and see the characters. Every writer has heard the advice of "show, don't tell", but remarkably few know what this really means, or how to do it. Or even when to show, and when to tell. Not everything needs to be shown. Sometimes tell works much better than show. A very basic rule of thumb is to show important action, show emotion, show location, and tell everything else. There are truths new writers either don't know, or simply don't believe. One is that it's at least a hundred times easier to sell a novel than it is to sell a short story. It just is. If you try to sell a short story to a top, high-paying magazine, you're going up against the best writers in the world. There's only so much space in a magazine, and even if your story is equal to their, yours will not sell. This means your story, in some way, must be BETTER than what those well-known, famous writers submit. The good news is that this is where DIFFERENT comes in. If you can't be better, be different. Different location, and the best possible location is where you live, different characters, which can be as simply as those characters having different jobs, different speech patterns, and different clothing, along with description that brings them to life. The bad news is that you probably either won't do this, or you'll take it too far and overdo it. Description can certainly be overdone, and it can certainly be too flowery, but nine times out of ten it's either underdone, or it's done in areas where tell works much better. Really good description sells stories that would otherwise be rejected. The horrible news is that even low pay and no pay magazines are almost as competitive as the big name, high-paying magazines. Yet new writer after new writer floods such magazines with stories because they believe, for no rational reason, that it's much easier to sell to such a magazine than it is to sell to a bigger, more famous magazine. It is a LITTLE easier, but not much, and you can't learn very much, you can't improve very much, by aiming all your stories at such magazines. In fact, you can kill a promising career by doing this, even if they buy some of your stories, or if you win a meaningless contest. As an editor, I am not at all impressed with a string of sales to these tione, no-pay magazines. All it does is tell me I've found a writer who isn't good enough to sell to a worthwhile market. The sad part oif this is that the writer may be good enough, but doesn't even try to sell to the really good markets for because the writer fears failure. You talk about dealing with rejection, but it's a thousand times easier to accepter being rejected by The New Yorker than it is to be rejected by Podunk Monthly. Start with the top market and work your way down the list. This has ALWAYS been the professional method, and it still is. I guarantee Podunk Monthly will still be there when its turn comes around. And even if every market above it rejects you, you'll learn far more about writing than you will in ten years of writing for Podunk Monthly level magazines. Another massive truth is that first drafts do not, ever, need to be bad. The worst, most destructive advice on writing in the world says that first drafts not only can be bad, but should be bad, It's a lie. Hemingway started it by saying, "All first drafts are shit". Except his first drafts, while often very different from his final drafts, were, in fact, excellent. They were better than ninety-nine percent of the final drafts by the best of his contemporaries. They could have sold anywhere. There are hundred of excellent writers who not inlt write magnificent first drafts, but who sell them as is. Like Hemingway, nearly all the selling writers I've known who offer this idiotic advice nevertheless werite very, very good first drafts. For many, many other writers, those who write a second draft, that second draft is nothing more than a little tightening, a little polishing of dialogue and description. It's often a one hour, or less, task. In pointy of fact, a good writer, a good storyteller, can't write a horrible first draft UNLESS he follows this stupid advice and thereby doesn't try to write a good one. The follow-up bit of truth is than bad first drafts very often can't be fixed. They can't be fixed by the writer, and they can't be fixed by an editor. This is why we reject so many stories. We can't fix them, and there's nothing in the story that shows us the writers can fix them. Simply put, your first draft doesn't have to be perfect, but it should still be good. If it isn't, the odds are a thousand to one that it never will be good enough to sell, regardless of how many rewrites and revisions it goes through. When I first sat down to write, it took me two days to write a very long short story. I was a high school dropout at the time, but I sold the first draft of that first short story to a national magazine for more money than my day job paid in a month. I had a problem, you see. I didn't know first drafts were supposed to be bad. I didn't know I was supposed to do three revisions and seven rewrites. No one ever gave me that advice because I'd never talked to or read about other writers. I actually thought I was supposed to write well and tell a good story with the first draft. So that's what I did. I only heard that advice about bad first drafts much later on, after I'd made numerous sales to top magazines, and after I learned that almost all of my favorite writers also wrote good first drafts because that's what they tried to do. Another absolute truth is that very, very, very few writers will ever succeed unless they write a LOT. Fiddling around with numerous drafts, and writing three or four short stories a year is highly unlikely to get you anywhere. Assuming you submit your stories, ALL OF THEM, writing fifty-two short stories per year will always do one of two things: 1. It will make you a success. Or 2. It will, within two or three years, prove that you lack the talent to ever be a success. This is the last hard truth, and then I'm done. Not everyone has the talent to be a good writer. The majority of those who try simply do not have the talent, and will never, ever write anything worth reading. Even most who do have the talent will fail because they lack the self-disciple, or are simply lazy, or because they just don't know or believe the truth. I may have posted Heinlein's rules for writing before. If so, you, like ninety-nine percent of those who fail, either didn't believe them, or decided they just don't apply to you. But they apply to every successful writer, including those who have never heard them. Anyone who says otherwise is a demon. Plug your ears, or fail at being a writer. sfwriter.com/ow05.htm
Still waiting to hear from Asimov magazine, they don't allow for multiple submissions so just waaaiting on that rejection so I can submit somewhere I'm more likely to get accepted
I have a beef with my first rejection. The rejection itself was not the problem. I learned that it can take weeks for the agent to get back to me. So I was getting my novel ready right before I went on vacation. My reasoning was: "Well it'll take the agent way longer than my vacation to get back to me, so I won't have to think about my novel during that time!" Ha ha, no she emailed me the rejection back halfway into my vacation. :(
Rejection is hard when they come in the form of all the same, formatted rejection email. I understand agents don't have time or may be hesitant to give more feedback, but it does not help. And the latest, with agents just ghosting you, may not be better.
Agents ghosting you? Don't be an idiot. And, ;ook, it is Not the job of an agent or editor to help you, until and unless you are at, or very, very near, professional level. Ninety percent of those who try never, ever get good enough to help. If you're getting form after form after form, your writing, or your story, or your characters, or all three, sucks rotten lemons. But it's up to you to change this. Chances are extremely high that agents and editors couldn't help you, even if they had time. This is your job. The way to get better is to read more, and to write more. A LOT more. There's no excuse to take years to write a novel. If you can't writing one in six months, and four is much more reasonable, and three is not a stretch, why would you think you'll ever be good?
@@jamesaritchie1 You are certainly entitled to your opinion. As a lifelong writer with many positive comments about my work and a membership in an extremely positive and well-known, supportive and international writing group, you may be off-base a bit. You don’t know me or my work, after all. Happy holidays to you!
Curently dealing with my mix of rejection and criping self doubt by the fact none of my work has sold in the past 8 months to a year no matter what I do with marketing and getting myself out there. I've stopped writing for over a month now because I just look at my work and think "Why write when no one's ever going to see it".
This is a lot to ask for, but could you maybe do a video on critiquing our work??? We’ll just send in 3 paragraphs from a short story, book, novel etc. that we wrote and you read a few in a video and give feedback on writing mistakes?? It’s completely your choice, just an idea.
There are editors for hire. You pay them to review your work and give feedback. This is the same feedback that writers once got in rejection letters. For a new writer, this might be worthwhile. I didn't try paid editors but I did join a writer's group for a while. It was eye-opening to see how different people reacted and to uncover the variety of priorities the readers had in that case. Do you have any thoughts about editors?
I think editors are very worthwhile to hire if you feel you want to improve your work, or you're unclear why a story is being rejected! They're not necessary, but editors do great work and can be very beneficial. However they're not a guarantee--I worked with a professional editor on a short story once because I was able to get a free edit through my job. This editor had read for many high profile magazines and gave me great feedback to revise the story, and he said that he felt it would be quite easy to place and a magazine would likely pick it up soon. Three years later, it's the only story I've been unable to place in a magazine and has been rejected more than any other piece by a huge margin. So, that was a lesson in how subjective things are haha. Writers groups are also a great option and I think anyone can benefit from one, I have a writer's group and run all my stories by them and have learned more from workshopping with them than anyone else!
Can I ask your opinion on requiring submission for a grade at the end of a semester? That was part of my final for a poetry class and it just left a bad taste in my mouth especially when the rejections came in
That's a bit strange, I've never heard of a class doing this before. I think it's good for professors/instructors to give students information on submission, and even recommend specific journals or markets they think would be a good fit for the piece, and I did have an assignment in a writing business class that required researching appropriate markets for my work which I thought was valuable. But, I think making a student submit as part of a grade feels a bit strange, as it's forcing students to submit work they may not feel is ready, or they may just not feel ready or interested in submitting work at all. It kind of assumes that this is the end goal with any piece, which it isn't necessarily, so it's odd to impose that. I see why it would leave a bad taste in your mouth.
There's no set number, but usually between around 1-10 (but it depends on how long the scenes are, and of course how long the story is). Usually scenes in a short story will be shorter and more concise than in a novel!
If you sent a story to a magazine a few years ago, and it got rejected, could you send it again if they get a new editor? I'm pretty sure I read this somewhere.
This is risky. Magazines are often not edited by one person, but by a board of editors (even if there is only one fiction editor listed on the masthead, it's likely all the editors discuss together), and go through multiple stages of readers. Unless they say in their submission guidelines, magazines don't want you to submit a story twice, and the risk is they could blacklist you (basically put you on a 'never publish this person' list) if they catch you doing this. However, if the staff is entirely different and it's been years, they may not notice. So basically: magazines don't want you to do this, but technically you can chance it if you feel it would be okay.
I can handle any rejection, but when it comes from family and friends, it stings. I know so many people who love reading but don’t want anything to do with my writing. And it’s like?? You read, bitch, here’s some free material. But no they don’t care :( if they had some kind of artistic hobby I would be sooo interested to see what they have put their heart into.
Hey Shaelin! I love your videos! Just want to ask you… what do you think of my working title? ‘Everybody keeps telling me he’s dead’ It’s a sequel to a novel I wrote for camp nano and it was a pain to come up with that title!
I know you didn’t ask me but I love it! I think it could be made more concise as “Everybody says he’s dead” but idk if that changes the meaning! You know better than me about that
@@taylorcrooks1368 short version: MCs friend is murdered and when the police close the case, he convinces himself that the painting on his apartment wall is of his friend who died
The best way to deal with rejection is to understand that a system of a select privileged few only lowering the drawbridge for what they personally find appealing, or what kind of stories they want the world to experience, does not mean you are a bad writer or a bad storyteller. What it means is that a system that prevents great stories from being told because the unelected privileged few said so is a system that should not exist, and we should work to not only avoid participating in it, but actively work to tear it down so the distribution of art is not subjected to the whims of the wealthy. Because what is the point of putting your blood, sweat, and tears into a passion project that might never have had a chance to be deemed worthy or acceptable by the elites in the first place? They will shut out dissenting voices because that is why they exist. Why do you think Hollywood is churning out dozens of stories about how great it is when billionaires get to do whatever they want (looking at you, Batman and Iron Man) and anything even remotely representative of the working class has to come from a place like South Korea, literally on the other side of the world? If the elites who benefit from the power structure won't let you scream, go to where your voice will be heard, because *there are people who want to hear what you have to say!* Forget the system. It doesn't exist to operate in your favor.
I don't know if this comment is just a general statement or in reference to a specific piece I mentioned getting rejected, but I think most writers tend to submit to magazines whose values and ideologies align with theirs, and that they can therefore support and would be proud to have their work in. I wouldn't submit to a magazine whose politics opposed my own because a) they would not be the audience for my work and b) if by some odd fluke they did accept me, I wouldn't be proud to have them showcasing my work.
![[Watch Party] RoV Pro League 2024 Winter | with Moowan ( Bacon Time Vs Talon )](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CCEDhu6dPN8/mqdefault.jpg)
The outfit+earrings+haircut are all giving ✨they/them✨
ugh thank you that's all I want to exude🙏🙏
@@ShaelinWrites as you should 😌❤️
The amount of self-doubt I feel when preparing to submit my work cannot be overstated. I needed this video, great topic!
The other day all I did during my 6 hour layover to Seattle was to submit my work - it was the best time spent ever on an airport. Although I got my fastest rejection ever (within few hours) it was still fulfilling. Thanks Shaelin for stressing this point over and over again.
What a good use of a layover I love that for you!!
This video came at the perfect time. The first time I got a rejection, I felt like such a failure. I stopped writing for a few days, but after that, submitted the piece to another magazine. It got rejected again, and I submitted it to another journal. It never got accepted and I stopped sending it to magazines because I know it needs more work and that it will take me a long time to get to it. But recently, I've started submitting poetry and I've noticed how my attitude towards submissions have changed. I am less worried about getting a rejection than I was before (it still hurts a bit but I'm proud of whatever little progress I have). I hope one day I'll see the word accepted on submittable or in a mail or something and feel like it was all worth it!
I once talked to an editor who rejected Ocean Vuong twice. To quote him, sometimes editors are wrong.
Wow if I rejected Ocean Vuong I would simply perish
Does that guy even still have a job tbh
You have a point
This might be kind of petty, but I keep a folder full of rejection letters. Printing out the rejection email and adding it to the folder helps me focus on the amount of submissions I've done, rather than whether or not they were published. If the goal is just to submit polished work to as many places as possible, then no matter the outcome I can feel good about how much work I've put in!
Great idea!
i like!! kinda resembles a FERNANDO-PESSOA-idea: art´s just about knitting a piece together before tearing it right after..^^ wanne become part of a non-rejetive-communal-pour-out-project: th-cam.com/video/ZvUKil3NMHo/w-d-xo.html
I just realised that many of these tips can apply to rejection from anything: An opportunity, a university, a job, or a date.
Very true!
I personally love Mur Lafferty's take: rejection means you're a working writer.
Maybe I should set a rejection goal for next year.
I love that tip too! I want to do this for next year's resolution, fingers crossed!
Oh this is timely! I just submitted and I fully expect to be rejected and I need to prepare my heart 🥺.
I've had a ton of rejections and one of them was just because the agent was already working on something similar so sometimes it's a lot about luck so I think it's really important to stay motivated ❤️
Take heart, young writers. You can't beat a tryer.
Kafka wielded his axe against the frozen sea (which he said was the purpose of writing) and most of his work was unpublished in his lifetime.
sooo true!! so let´s all turn into cockroach (like Gregor) and switch back to collaboration rather than "frozen" individuals: th-cam.com/video/ZvUKil3NMHo/w-d-xo.html
I needed this. You are awesome and quite possibly psychic!
Pre-emptively watching this to prepare future me for the inevitable rejections in the hope it protects my soul 🙏😆
Your soul is protected!!
Great video, wish I had heard it decades ago. I find the best way around this problem is realizing that "rejection" is such a loaded term, that if we just replace it with "not accepted," a lot of the big issue goes away. If we reinterpret every rejection notice as, "Not accepted because we can't accept 12,000 pieces a month. Thanks for sending" ... then we have a much less dramatic response. The term "rejection" is so often connected with relationships, where it is intensely painful, that we are setting ourselves up by even using the term.
When a door is shut it's because it was the wrong door!
Everything happens for a reason and rejection is often a blessing in disguise that you do see later down the line!
Rejection is protection!
I am not a professional writer but on my life path as a Coach and Spiritual Teacher as well as Medium.
I have learnt the above!
Keep on knocking and listen to your intuition as when the right door opens then you will know you are on the right path!!!
Side note: I love the fact that you said 'story'. Saying 'novelist' doesn't fit for me. I think 'story-teller' fits much better. Still need the 'writer' part but, yes I prefer story.
Everyone prefers story and character. Doesn't change a thing.
As a (former) professional musician, I’ve gotten so used to rejection with auditions, so I just submit work I love when possible, email professors as much as possible when needed, etc. and even if I don’t get a response (not even a rejection) I’m like “that’s fine!”
But if I get a positive response I’m like “awesome that makes me feel good”
That being said, with music, I knew I couldn’t audition to places like Juliard or Curtis, and I apply that same logic with writing.
I’m not a super experienced writer, and it probably won’t be my primary focus after undergrad, so I won’t be applying to places like the Iowa Writers Workshop for my MFA or anything lol
Semantic satiation for the word “Rejected.”
watched this for the first time when it was uploaded like "i'm never gonna submit my work"... rewatching it now after getting my first rejection lol
I can apply this to art competitions I have been rejected by, usually in the first round. I've been painting for years and can draw most things proportionately from my imagination. Someone from my art class had painstakingly copied an image onto canvas using the grid method. She's new at art and can't draw quickly or intuitively but got much further in the competition than I did. The submission fees do make it sting though. I reassure myself that if I wasn't any better than a novice, I wouldn't be have a career as a freelance illustrator.
Submission fees are for suckers and losers. There are far, far too many excellent markets, and even contests that do not have submission fees, and this applies to painting, as well as writinmg. If you have to pay to get your work looked at or read, you'll still be a loser, even if you win a contest.
Thanks! ❤❤❤ This is totally what i need to hear. I dont think rejection has been particularly painful for me but it does cause me to self-reject a lot of my work by not even submitting
I'm sorry if I am too late for commenting on this video, but I just wanted to thank you for giving me the motivation to submit my work elsewhere after getting declined. I honestly cannot thank you enough.
So helpful! Thank you so much for sharing!
It's perfect that you posted this today since I was in a writing frame of mind anyway.
Excellent video. Very useful information. And i agree with your point in not having dream agents. It just pedestals agents and makes rejections worse. They're human just like us. Treat them equally.
been there, done that. thanks for the video, inspiring as always :)
I wonder if there are any successful authors who haven't been rejected? I can't imagine there are any, at least not in modern times (I imagine the process was very different in the olden days)
You look adorable, thank you for your efforts and tips my dear.
Thank you for this. You are right it never ends and your motivation ideas are great. I also remember what Becket said. I also learned a lot working as a reader.
If you need more motivation than the love of writing, find another line of work. There are two words no writer should ever utter: "Motivation" and "inspiration". Both are excuses for procrastination, or outright laziness. The old saying that "Everyone wants to be a writer, but no one really wants to write" is true. If you aren't sitting down and writing at every possible opportunity simply because there is no other thing on earth you would rather be doing with your time, quit. Find something to do that fits this desire. But give up writing.
Belated 🍁🦃🍽 HAPPY THANKSGIVING 🍽🦃🍁
Thank you, I love your videos and this is so helpful! My favorite tips are:
1. Write and submit your best work.
2. Don't take things (especially rejections) personally.
And as a children's book writer, I hear that in the children's book publishing industry, getting rejection letters is actually a "positive" because most rejections are conveyed by radio silence.
"Submit your best work" is nonsense. Only failures take this route. The writer has no clue what is or isn't his or her best work. You can slave over something for weeks, months, or years, and produce garbage. Or you can start and finish something in a day, and produce genius. The only possible way to know what is and isn't your best work is to submit it. Just finish it. I promise you, slaving for long periods over something, trying to get it to the point where YOU think it's your best, very seldom leads to more quality. More often than not, it leads to muddying up a good piece of work.
You don't have to start and finish something in four hours, but if you can't start and finish it in a week, you will probably never be a success.
Joining Twitter was the best thing I've done for myself as a writer. It was such a reality check for rejections... I submitted to an inaugural issue of a new online magazine that I liked the vibes of just before the window closed and they posted they got 450 subscriptions! For this one little online journal that had never even published an issue! Imagine how many submissions high profile magazines get? It is SO not personal.
* submissions, not subscriptions.
I just wanna learn how to write a story under 7k because about 80% of my personalized rejections say the story was just too damn long lmao
Currently submitting a 7k story that has now become 9k after a revise and resubmit and....it is painful
@@ShaelinWrites lmao godspeed
It is important to remember that people accept work not based on quality, but on what they think will make them the most money with the least amount of risk. Quality does play a factor, but there is all sort of marketing factors involved as well.
Since I was mostly talking from the perspective of literary magazines, in this case money really isn't a factor since most magazines don't make any profit! They mostly run as volunteer run projects or off grants and many issues are available for free. But it's definitely a factor in traditional publishing and securing a book deal for sure, trends and what's marketable have a lot of impact.
I do have an interesting perhaps helpful story for listeners on this. One time I did have all my eggs in one basket on a submission, I think it was my first ever and to the major mag of the genre, everything perfect, me an unknown but challenging for a position, and I was "all-in" on getting accepted. Long shot ... it came back "we want it." But then the process before it actually got printed went on for months of cancellations and delays, so long that it practically ruined the original "yes." So the moral of the story is that the publishing game does not revolve around our desires, and that the writing itself is the ultimate value of it.
It probably helps to be the kind of person who is a self-promoter, sort of like an old time blues musician who is so far out of the mainstream yet who succeeds due to his out-there personality.
The writer never knows how good or bad, how publishable of unpublishable, his or he r own work is. If writers knew this slush wouldn't be filled with horrible writing. It isn't the writer's job to judge quality. That's the editor's job, so a writer needs to take care of submitting, and allow the editor to do the job of judging quality.
I can tell you this absolutely. The number one reason stories get rejected is because they're BAD. Horribly, terribly bad in every way. The number two reason is that while they may be well-written, they're the same old, same old, same old, same old plot, location, characters, "message", etc. every editor has seen hundreds, or thousands, of times. There's an old truism that remains true today, "Editors want something just like everything else, only DIFFERENT".
If you can do this, your chances of a sale go way, way up, EVEN IF THE QUALITY OF YOUR WRITING REMAINS THE SAME. I know that truism sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. What it means is that you give the editor reasonably good writing, reasonably good structure, the right length, all the normal things that go into a story, but then give that editor a location that isn't being used by other writers, characters that are not the same ones editors see constantly, and dialogue that is real to the location and characters, and you'll be ahead of at least ninety percent of everything the editor will see that month, and maybe that
year.
Despite what so many advise, description is critical. If you can bring a new location and different characters alive, you will sell stories. The way to do this is to remember that writing is always a VISUAL art form. You must make the editor, and ordinary readers, SEE the location, see the action, and see the characters. Every writer has heard the advice of "show, don't tell", but remarkably few know what this really means, or how to do it. Or even when to show, and when to tell. Not everything needs to be shown. Sometimes tell works much better than show. A very basic rule of thumb is to show important action, show emotion, show location, and tell everything else.
There are truths new writers either don't know, or simply don't believe. One is that it's at least a hundred times easier to sell a novel than it is to sell a short story. It just is. If you try to sell a short story to a top, high-paying magazine, you're going up against the best writers in the world. There's only so much space in a magazine, and even if your story is equal to their, yours will not sell. This means your story, in some way, must be BETTER than what those well-known, famous writers submit.
The good news is that this is where DIFFERENT comes in. If you can't be better, be different. Different location, and the best possible location is where you live, different characters, which can be as simply as those characters having different jobs, different speech patterns, and different clothing, along with description that brings them to life.
The bad news is that you probably either won't do this, or you'll take it too far and overdo it. Description can certainly be overdone, and it can certainly be too flowery, but nine times out of ten it's either underdone, or it's done in areas where tell works much better. Really good description sells stories that would otherwise be rejected.
The horrible news is that even low pay and no pay magazines are almost as competitive as the big name, high-paying magazines. Yet new writer after new writer floods such magazines with stories because they believe, for no rational reason, that it's much easier to sell to such a magazine than it is to sell to a bigger, more famous magazine. It is a LITTLE easier, but not much, and you can't learn very much, you can't improve very much, by aiming all your stories at such magazines. In fact, you can kill a promising career by doing this, even if they buy some of your stories, or if you win a meaningless contest.
As an editor, I am not at all impressed with a string of sales to these tione, no-pay magazines. All it does is tell me I've found a writer who isn't good enough to sell to a worthwhile market. The sad part oif this is that the writer may be good enough, but doesn't even try to sell to the really good markets for because the writer fears failure.
You talk about dealing with rejection, but it's a thousand times easier to accepter being rejected by The New Yorker than it is to be rejected by Podunk Monthly.
Start with the top market and work your way down the list. This has ALWAYS been the professional method, and it still is. I guarantee Podunk Monthly will still be there when its turn comes around. And even if every market above it rejects you, you'll learn far more about writing than you will in ten years of writing for Podunk Monthly level magazines.
Another massive truth is that first drafts do not, ever, need to be bad. The worst, most destructive advice on writing in the world says that first drafts not only can be bad, but should be bad, It's a lie. Hemingway started it by saying, "All first drafts are shit". Except his first drafts, while often very different from his final drafts, were, in fact, excellent. They were better than ninety-nine percent of the final drafts by the best of his contemporaries. They could have sold anywhere.
There are hundred of excellent writers who not inlt write magnificent first drafts, but who sell them as is. Like Hemingway, nearly all the selling writers I've known who offer this idiotic advice nevertheless werite very, very good first drafts. For many, many other writers, those who write a second draft, that second draft is nothing more than a little tightening, a little polishing of dialogue and description. It's often a one hour, or less, task.
In pointy of fact, a good writer, a good storyteller, can't write a horrible first draft UNLESS he follows this stupid advice and thereby doesn't try to write a good one.
The follow-up bit of truth is than bad first drafts very often can't be fixed. They can't be fixed by the writer, and they can't be fixed by an editor. This is why we reject so many stories. We can't fix them, and there's nothing in the story that shows us the writers can fix them. Simply put, your first draft doesn't have to be perfect, but it should still be good. If it isn't, the odds are a thousand to one that it never will be good enough to sell, regardless of how many rewrites and revisions it goes through.
When I first sat down to write, it took me two days to write a very long short story. I was a high school dropout at the time, but I sold the first draft of that first short story to a national magazine for more money than my day job paid in a month. I had a problem, you see. I didn't know first drafts were supposed to be bad. I didn't know I was supposed to do three revisions and seven rewrites. No one ever gave me that advice because I'd never talked to or read about other writers. I actually thought I was supposed to write well and tell a good story with the first draft. So that's what I did.
I only heard that advice about bad first drafts much later on, after I'd made numerous sales to top magazines, and after I learned that almost all of my favorite writers also wrote good first drafts because that's what they tried to do.
Another absolute truth is that very, very, very few writers will ever succeed unless they write a LOT. Fiddling around with numerous drafts, and writing three or four short stories a year is highly unlikely to get you anywhere. Assuming you submit your stories, ALL OF THEM, writing fifty-two short stories per year will always do one of two things: 1. It will make you a success. Or 2. It will, within two or three years, prove that you lack the talent to ever be a success.
This is the last hard truth, and then I'm done. Not everyone has the talent to be a good writer. The majority of those who try simply do not have the talent, and will never, ever write anything worth reading. Even most who do have the talent will fail because they lack the self-disciple, or are simply lazy, or because they just don't know or believe the truth.
I may have posted Heinlein's rules for writing before. If so, you, like ninety-nine percent of those who fail, either didn't believe them, or decided they just don't apply to you. But they apply to every successful writer, including those who have never heard them. Anyone who says otherwise is a demon. Plug your ears, or fail at being a writer.
sfwriter.com/ow05.htm
I gotta say, I love your outfit.
Still waiting to hear from Asimov magazine, they don't allow for multiple submissions so just waaaiting on that rejection so I can submit somewhere I'm more likely to get accepted
I have a beef with my first rejection. The rejection itself was not the problem. I learned that it can take weeks for the agent to get back to me. So I was getting my novel ready right before I went on vacation. My reasoning was: "Well it'll take the agent way longer than my vacation to get back to me, so I won't have to think about my novel during that time!"
Ha ha, no she emailed me the rejection back halfway into my vacation. :(
Nooooo I just had to deal with publishing messiness while on vacation and it's so annoying!!
I adore you vidéos. Thank you very much
Rejection is hard when they come in the form of all the same, formatted rejection email. I understand agents don't have time or may be hesitant to give more feedback, but it does not help. And the latest, with agents just ghosting you, may not be better.
Agents ghosting you? Don't be an idiot. And, ;ook, it is Not the job of an agent or editor to help you, until and unless you are at, or very, very near, professional level. Ninety percent of those who try never, ever get good enough to help. If you're getting form after form after form, your writing, or your story, or your characters, or all three, sucks rotten lemons. But it's up to you to change this. Chances are extremely high that agents and editors couldn't help you, even if they had time.
This is your job. The way to get better is to read more, and to write more. A LOT more. There's no excuse to take years to write a novel. If you can't writing one in six months, and four is much more reasonable, and three is not a stretch, why would you think you'll ever be good?
@@jamesaritchie1 You are certainly entitled to your opinion. As a lifelong writer with many positive comments about my work and a membership in an extremely positive and well-known, supportive and international writing group, you may be off-base a bit. You don’t know me or my work, after all. Happy holidays to you!
A lot of great points. Thanks!
Curently dealing with my mix of rejection and criping self doubt by the fact none of my work has sold in the past 8 months to a year no matter what I do with marketing and getting myself out there.
I've stopped writing for over a month now because I just look at my work and think "Why write when no one's ever going to see it".
This is a lot to ask for, but could you maybe do a video on critiquing our work??? We’ll just send in 3 paragraphs from a short story, book, novel etc. that we wrote and you read a few in a video and give feedback on writing mistakes?? It’s completely your choice, just an idea.
There are editors for hire. You pay them to review your work and give feedback. This is the same feedback that writers once got in rejection letters. For a new writer, this might be worthwhile.
I didn't try paid editors but I did join a writer's group for a while. It was eye-opening to see how different people reacted and to uncover the variety of priorities the readers had in that case.
Do you have any thoughts about editors?
I think editors are very worthwhile to hire if you feel you want to improve your work, or you're unclear why a story is being rejected! They're not necessary, but editors do great work and can be very beneficial. However they're not a guarantee--I worked with a professional editor on a short story once because I was able to get a free edit through my job. This editor had read for many high profile magazines and gave me great feedback to revise the story, and he said that he felt it would be quite easy to place and a magazine would likely pick it up soon. Three years later, it's the only story I've been unable to place in a magazine and has been rejected more than any other piece by a huge margin. So, that was a lesson in how subjective things are haha. Writers groups are also a great option and I think anyone can benefit from one, I have a writer's group and run all my stories by them and have learned more from workshopping with them than anyone else!
@@ShaelinWrites Thanks, Shaelin! And thanks for all the inspiring videos. I'm sure my writing has improved thanks to you.
Hi Shaelin ,A Very Good Morning 🌅
Can I send my character essay to you to line edit? I think it’s a good essay but I would love more feedback
Can I ask your opinion on requiring submission for a grade at the end of a semester? That was part of my final for a poetry class and it just left a bad taste in my mouth especially when the rejections came in
That's a bit strange, I've never heard of a class doing this before. I think it's good for professors/instructors to give students information on submission, and even recommend specific journals or markets they think would be a good fit for the piece, and I did have an assignment in a writing business class that required researching appropriate markets for my work which I thought was valuable. But, I think making a student submit as part of a grade feels a bit strange, as it's forcing students to submit work they may not feel is ready, or they may just not feel ready or interested in submitting work at all. It kind of assumes that this is the end goal with any piece, which it isn't necessarily, so it's odd to impose that. I see why it would leave a bad taste in your mouth.
How many scenes should a short story have?
There's no set number, but usually between around 1-10 (but it depends on how long the scenes are, and of course how long the story is). Usually scenes in a short story will be shorter and more concise than in a novel!
Can you please give me some examples of magazines that accepts short fictions?
There are hundreds out there! Try googling 'literary magazines + your genre
or look at this directory blog.reedsy.com/literary-magazines/
If you sent a story to a magazine a few years ago, and it got rejected, could you send it again if they get a new editor? I'm pretty sure I read this somewhere.
This is risky. Magazines are often not edited by one person, but by a board of editors (even if there is only one fiction editor listed on the masthead, it's likely all the editors discuss together), and go through multiple stages of readers. Unless they say in their submission guidelines, magazines don't want you to submit a story twice, and the risk is they could blacklist you (basically put you on a 'never publish this person' list) if they catch you doing this. However, if the staff is entirely different and it's been years, they may not notice. So basically: magazines don't want you to do this, but technically you can chance it if you feel it would be okay.
Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss were rejected multiple times, so keep going!
I can handle any rejection, but when it comes from family and friends, it stings. I know so many people who love reading but don’t want anything to do with my writing. And it’s like?? You read, bitch, here’s some free material. But no they don’t care :( if they had some kind of artistic hobby I would be sooo interested to see what they have put their heart into.
Maybe they just don't want to hurt your feelings if they don't like it.
It could just be that it's not the kind of thing they're normally into.
@@booksvsmovies Well I’ll never find out if they don’t like it because they don’t want to read it lol
Hey Shaelin! I love your videos! Just want to ask you… what do you think of my working title?
‘Everybody keeps telling me he’s dead’
It’s a sequel to a novel I wrote for camp nano and it was a pain to come up with that title!
I know you didn’t ask me but I love it! I think it could be made more concise as “Everybody says he’s dead” but idk if that changes the meaning! You know better than me about that
@@taylorcrooks1368 thanks! It’s just a working title so I’ll consider it!!
@@taylorcrooks1368 okay I considered it, I love I’m going to change it! Thanks anyway!
@@sazmarie1281 Awesome! It has me intrigued, what’s it’s about?
@@taylorcrooks1368 short version: MCs friend is murdered and when the police close the case, he convinces himself that the painting on his apartment wall is of his friend who died
Are you an undercover agent?
I have noticed police siren in your videos many times.
Even in this one.
They’re ambulances, I live near a hospital.
@@ShaelinWrites Got it.
The best way to deal with rejection is to understand that a system of a select privileged few only lowering the drawbridge for what they personally find appealing, or what kind of stories they want the world to experience, does not mean you are a bad writer or a bad storyteller. What it means is that a system that prevents great stories from being told because the unelected privileged few said so is a system that should not exist, and we should work to not only avoid participating in it, but actively work to tear it down so the distribution of art is not subjected to the whims of the wealthy. Because what is the point of putting your blood, sweat, and tears into a passion project that might never have had a chance to be deemed worthy or acceptable by the elites in the first place? They will shut out dissenting voices because that is why they exist. Why do you think Hollywood is churning out dozens of stories about how great it is when billionaires get to do whatever they want (looking at you, Batman and Iron Man) and anything even remotely representative of the working class has to come from a place like South Korea, literally on the other side of the world?
If the elites who benefit from the power structure won't let you scream, go to where your voice will be heard, because *there are people who want to hear what you have to say!* Forget the system. It doesn't exist to operate in your favor.
First
It probably doesn't fit their political agenda.
I don't know if this comment is just a general statement or in reference to a specific piece I mentioned getting rejected, but I think most writers tend to submit to magazines whose values and ideologies align with theirs, and that they can therefore support and would be proud to have their work in. I wouldn't submit to a magazine whose politics opposed my own because a) they would not be the audience for my work and b) if by some odd fluke they did accept me, I wouldn't be proud to have them showcasing my work.
@@ShaelinWrites Its just a statement. I didn't watch your whole video. Sorry. I was on break time at work.
Fred Pohl rejected Ray Bradbury it was something he regretted