E.S. Raye

This week, I was going to talk about how busy I’ve suddenly become.

I was going to tell you all about how I heard back from the publisher that requested the full transcript of Gas Giant Gambit, and how they were just telling me they hadn’t gotten a chance to read it yet. I was going to talk about how, instead, they were actually reaching out to me to see if I would be interested in contributing a short story to the anthology they’re aiming to publish before the end of the year. I was then going to talk about how I excitedly agreed to give them a story by the end of the month, completely forgetting that I had also signed up for a screenwriting contest with a deadline of next Saturday night (March 23 at 11:59 PM). And then I was going to talk about how difficult it is for me to jump from prose writing back into screenwriting because the formats and styles are so vastly different.

But I’m not going to talk about that this week after all (but maybe next week, haha).

Instead, I’m going to talk about a new goal I have recently set for myself.

You see, before I had the chance to actually sit down and write this week’s blog, I heard back from a couple of places I had recently submitted short stories; one a contest, another a magazine I’ve been waiting to open for submissions for months.

Neither were interested in the short stories I had submitted.

Two more rejections to add to the homepage’s counter.

This could be a time for depression, ennui, questioning if I’ve got what it takes. But I choose to look at it differently. I choose to be confident in my abilities and in my ability to continue to grow and get better.

For some stories, that means deciding that I like it the way it is, and if the publisher didn’t, then it’s just not for them. For others, especially those older stories from when I first started writing shorts, it’s a chance to re-edit or update them to match my current skill level.

With this attitude in mind, I have set a new goal for myself, in the spirit of my New Year’s resolution, to write a short story every week that I’m not working on a larger project: I want to reach 100 rejections by the end of the year.

To be clear, it’s not really the rejections I’m after; I won’t be submitting substandard stories just to get the rejection letter. Rather, it’s about the volume of submissions I put out into the world.

Rejections are a part of life for any writer of fiction. Dune was rejected 23 times. The Notebook was rejected 24 times. Hell, even the ubiquitous Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected 144 times! You couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a copy and at least two of its spin-offs when I was a teenager.

It only takes one.

My hope is that if I can put quality stories out often enough to reach 100 rejections, it means I’m writing enough to have the material to share, and I’m getting it all out in front of plenty of eyes.

It only takes one set of peepers to flag something and get the ball rolling. I’ve already got proof of that, with my first short story being published last month, and now being asked to contribute a story to a pending anthology.

So look out magazine publishers and short story contests, ’cause here I come.