Writer Math

A short short story on rejection and perseverance:

I received a short story rejection this week that really landed hard. Naturally, I felt a little a lot bummed. As I logged the response in my short stories submissions spreadsheet, though, my attention caught on the respectable number of green lines (acceptances) among the red (rejections).

I don’t write a ton of short stories. In the past 10 or 12 years, I’ve logged 25 submissions. Of those, 8 have been accepted and published. 32%! Not bad. But when I looked closer, 7 of the stories in my spreadsheet had been submitted multiple times — several rejected then accepted, a couple rejected then rejected again (and again, in one case). So though I’d submitted 25 times, the number of stories I’d written totaled 18. And 8 acceptances for 18 stories is a very nice 44%.

I’m still bummed — 9 for 18, an even 50%, would have been cool — but I’m inspired enough to put the disappointment aside and go for submission #26.