Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays

by Windy Lynn Harris

  We appreciate your inquiry. We have a long list of stories we’re still considering. We will get back to you with an answer as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.

  I suspect they will check their slush pile and read your work soon after. Even if they don’t, you’ve had a chance to behave like a professional writer again. That kind of thing is remembered in this business.

  WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET AN ACCEPTANCE LETTER

  Celebrate (obviously)! And then, after carefully reading everything, accept their offer. You should send an e-mail back to the editor within twenty-four hours, telling him that you accept. He’s waiting to see if you’re really on board so he can move to the production phase. My note usually looks like this:

  Hi Ms. Johnson,

  Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of Pithead Chapel’s May 17 edition. I’m looking forward to publication day.

  That’s it. Quick and professional.

  Next, you need to inform any editor still holding your work that you’ve sold the piece. Again, this needs to happen within twenty-four hours so that editor can stop the process of reading or discussing your piece. Your work could be at the last round of decision, for all you know. The editor might be trying to decide between your story and another. The sooner you can pull your work, the easier his job will be. That letter looks like this:

  Dear Mr. Thompson,

  I wanted to inform you right away that my short story, “A Town Built on Salt,” was accepted by another journal. I plan to send you another story in the future. I’d like to work together one day.

  This letter accomplished two things: 1) It shows the editor you are a trustworthy professional who cares about the submission process, and 2) it shows the editor that your story was a good one and that he missed out. Maybe next time he’ll remember your name and read your work a little faster.

  Invoices and Payments

  Once you have a publishing contract solidified, you need to keep track of when, where, and how much this magazine is going to pay you. Normally you’ll receive a check and your contributor copies right on time, but once in a while you have to remind an editor that you haven’t been paid. It happens. Wait until thirty days have elapsed from the original projected pay date, and then send a polite e-mail about the matter. Your note might go something like this:

  Hi Mr. Jacobs,

  I’m inquiring about payment for the June 25 publication of my short story, “Mrs. Anderson’s Jesus.” Do you know if the check has already been sent?

  Consider using the following invoice tracker, or create something else that works well for you. If you like keeping all of your records online, you might prefer creating a spreadsheet.

  View a text version of this Worksheet

  YOUR TURN: SUBMIT YOUR WORK LIKE A PRO

  The goal is to submit your work professionally and have an editor offer a publishing contract. To have the best chance at success, give each story or essay your full attention during your submission time. Here’s a checklist to follow when you sit down to send your work:

  Double-check that you’re happy with the final draft of your story or essay.

  Distance yourself from the work for a minute, and search out all of the possible categories and topics.

  Find five viable markets to query. Refer to your category list for comparisons.

  Write a great cover letter to a specific editor for a specific reason.

  Format your manuscript.

  Read the writers’ guidelines for submissions, and follow them exactly. Watch for the words “simultaneous submissions” and “multiple submissions.” Adjust your query plan accordingly.

  Record your submission in some organized way.

  When you’re ready, press that “send” button (or put that letter in the mail)!

  KEEP TRACK OF YOUR WORK

  Interested in downloading trackers like the ones featured in this book? Visit www.writersdigest.com/writing-selling-short-stories-personal-essays.

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  HOW TO DEAL WITH REJECTION

  The very first rejection letter I ever received is pinned to the corkboard near my desk. It came from Good Housekeeping in January of 2006. I’d sent them a personal essay titled “Muddle Age.” It’s a small piece of paper, about one-third of a sheet. The company’s logo is printed at the top in green.

  This rejection letter is a badge of honor for me, proving that I was brave enough to send my work out to the world that very first time. I keep it nearby as encouragement: Keep at this—keep sharing my voice. Keep putting my words into the hands of strangers.

  It hasn’t gotten any easier to submit my writing. I feel vulnerability creep up every single time. I comfort myself with the facts: 1) I firmly believe the piece I’m sending out is ready for publication and has been edited to my fullest ability, and 2) I am sending my work to someone looking for submissions like mine.

  I also know that everything will be just fine if I get a rejection letter. I’ve received hundreds of rejections from magazines over the years, and I’m still here, writing stories and essays and pushing them out the door. Rejection isn’t going to stop you from submitting your work, either.

  There’s an interesting fact about rejection letters that I want to share with you: Rejections are among the most boring pieces of communication on Earth. Most magazines have a bland rejection template. Sometimes they fill in your name, and sometimes they don’t. For example, that rejection letter I received from Good Housekeeping reads:

  Dear Contributor:

  Thank you for your submission. We read it with interest. Unfortunately, it does not meet our editorial needs at this time. We appreciate you thinking of Good Housekeeping and wish you the best [of luck in] placing your material elsewhere.

  Sincerely,

  The Editors

  Three months later I received this letter from Complete Woman:

  Dear Windy:

  Thank you for submitting the enclosed materials for our consideration. While we certainly enjoyed your work, it does not meet with our current editorial needs. Please feel free to submit more of your work in the future. We appreciate your interest in our publication.

  Sincerely,

  Bonnie L. Krueger,

  Editor-in-Chief

  You’d read similar variations of “no thank you” if you flipped through the seventeen other rejections I received that year, and you’d read more of the same if you saw the letters I got last week. You will never be judged or harassed or made to feel small in a rejection letter. This business doesn’t work like that. You’ll feel a sting because you were turned down, but you won’t be stung by the words of an editor. In fact, you might even read a rejection letter and smile because there is something in this business called a good rejection letter.

  GOOD REJECTIONS

  Good rejection letters are the ones where an editor has stopped the busy machine of magazine production for a moment and written you a personal note of encouragement. It might be a few lines added to the bottom of a form letter or perhaps an expansion of a magazine’s basic e-mail rejection. Either way, this note is important. It is meant to make you stop your busy machine, too.

  A note of personal encouragement is a big green flashing light that indicates your writing stood out among the hundreds of other submissions this editor recently received. Your work was so promising that someone took the time to say hello and give you a thumbs-up. You didn’t make the final cut, but the editor wanted you to know that there’s something pretty awesome about your work.

  Take a minute to let that compliment sink in. Let it warm your writer bones and fill your writer lungs. You deserve that wide smile across your face.

  The custom of writing personal bits of encouragement to writers is generations old. The masters we’ve studied received both generic and encouraging rejections along the way. I like to keep track of any personal rejection I receive in a file marked “Submit Again.” This editor likes my style. When I send them a new story, I’ll mention our prior
contact in the cover letter. I also put a star beside that rejection when I log it into my submission tracker. If I’ve received a good rejection or two for a piece making the rounds of submission, I know not to stop and revise, even if I rack up a long list of rejections. The piece will find a home; it’s only a matter of time.

  Should I Thank the Editor for the Rejection?

  You can if you’d like, but it isn’t necessary and not expected as part of being a polite writer. I’ve replied “thank you” to some editors who have sent me personal notes but not all of them.

  Can I Resubmit the Same Story Again if I Revise It?

  Don’t send an editor a revised edition of a story they’ve rejected. Move on to other markets. If an editor is interested enough in your piece to look at it a second time, they’ll ask for revisions instead of sending a rejection letter.

  Should I Send Them a Different Story?

  Absolutely! As soon as you have something appropriate for their magazine, send it. Don’t let too much time go by. Make sure you mention your prior contact in your new cover letter.

  True Rejection Stories from Fellow Writers

  “My dad is a writer, and while I was in grade school and junior high, he had been writing and submitting short stories to various magazines across the country. He would give me a few to read, gauge my reaction, telling me to be honest if something didn’t make sense or sounded off. He treated me like the budding writer I had become, and I was happy for the experience. Dad would then mail the stories off and continue writing while he waited patiently for a response.

  “‘Always expect a rejection letter,’ he would say, tacking to the corkboard in his office the latest ‘thanks, but no thanks’ response from some magazine. ‘There are millions of us writers out there, so keep that in mind when sending something off. Then you’ll be pleasantly surprised when you do get accepted.’

  “I didn’t start submitting my writing until earlier this year, and when I did, I sent out the pieces to one place only and they accepted them the next day for their upcoming issue. I was floored, expecting an e-mail of rejection instead. Actually, I was hoping for a rejection to see how I’d handle it. Then I considered myself lucky, thinking that the next time I submit, lightning wouldn’t strike twice. I was right, not just once but twice in the same week. These rejections stung slightly for a few seconds; then what I’d been taught for twenty-five years kicked in—it’s the nature of the beast. I went back to the stories I sent out and started reworking them where I felt they needed it most. It was cathartic and exciting because I … already had a good idea of where the words didn’t sound quite right or where more skin on the bones was needed. Fix it up; send it back out; keep writing.

  “If I were to get sullen about every rejection letter to come my way, well, there would probably be a long, cluttered trail of empty Ben & Jerry’s containers, Snickers wrappers, and donut boxes leading to me, facedown on a sidewalk somewhere. Instead, I just remember what my dad always said, still says: ‘These things happen, kid. Just gotta start over and keep at it.’”

  —Hillary Umland

  “Most of my submission stories end with the sting of rejection, but some also incorporate ‘acceptance remorse.’ Remember that Groucho Marx line, the one where he says he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member? Many times in the past, I would submit a piece simultaneously to several journals. Among the group I’d include one dream journal, the equivalent of a high-school senior’s ‘reach school.’ All literary journals are selective, and my dream journals are even more so. I knew my chance of being accepted by my dream journal was exceedingly slim, but I figured, why not try? Inevitably, one of the other journals would respond first, accepting the piece, and I always regretted not giving my dream journal an exclusive first shot. Sure, I had as much chance of being accepted by one of my dream journals as winning the lottery, but if I continued as I had, I’d never know for sure.

  “My latest episode of ‘Adventures in Submitting’ began in January and resolved eight months later, in autumn. I wrote a humorous/heartfelt (or at least I thought so) essay in the form of a list and wanted to submit it to a certain dream journal. The information on their submission page was written in a breezy tone and this made me think my piece might have a fair chance there.

  “I pressed ‘submit.’ I waited. Winter transitioned into spring. I waited. Spring eased into summer and no word. By mid-summer the piece had been tied up for so long, I figured I should [implement] a Plan B. I decided to submit the essay to another journal, a lovely journal, a journal I’d be proud to appear in but one not as well-known as my dream journal. I hadn’t totally given up on my original plan, but I gave myself permission to submit to this second journal because I told myself there was no way the lovely journal would get back to me before my dream journal.

  “The information on Duotrope, an online service that tracks statistics on literary magazines’ turnaround times, led me to believe that I would hear from my dream literary journal any day. The dream journal had just rejected a submission sent in fifty days after mine. This made me hopeful. After all, why would they hold off on deciding on my piece, which they’d had longer, if it wasn’t still in the running? Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were leading me on. I complained to my husband, ‘It’s been 259 days! If they are going to reject me, why don’t they just do it and end my suspense already?!’ To which my husband replied, ‘Honey, if anyone deserves to be rejected, it’s you.’

  “The next day author Laila Lalami gave a reading at the university where I am working toward my MFA, and as I waited to get my photo snapped with her, I glanced at my phone. There it was: an acceptance. From the lovely journal. I’ve been told that in the submissions game it’s first come, first served, but I couldn’t let go of the possibility of being published by my dream journal. The lovely journal’s editor asked if my piece was still available. Was it? I sent an e-mail directly to the editor of the dream journal, bypassing the traditional submission system. I explained to the dream journal’s editor how much I would love to have them pick up my piece but that I would need to know that same day in order to be fair to the lovely journal.

  “A few hours later, the dream journal’s editor sent me a rejection. By that time, I was so glad to know one way or the other that the rejection didn’t sting. (That’s a lie; it killed me.) But I had a wonderful home for the piece in the lovely journal. And in their rejection note, the dream journal had asked me to submit other work. I sent them another piece that same evening. I’m still waiting.”

  —Susan Lerner

  Note: The story Susan is talking about went on to be nominated for a Pushcart Prize that year!

  “When I finally got around to writing a short story, my goal was simple: Write a story that readers would enjoy and, if published, wouldn’t stalk me throughout my life with humiliation and shame. I didn’t know much about literary magazines then. Over the years I’d read some of the more acclaimed ones, but most of my exposure had been limited to collections. I sent my nearly 6,000-word story to a top-tier lit mag and of course was left wondering a few months later where to send it next. I wish I could say I had a letter from that very first rejection. My status merely changed on their website. This is when I decided to incorporate prospect research into publication and to treat rejection as part of the business of publishing. I started looking for places that fit my writing and my publishing goals.

  “I managed to find prospective publication venues, new writing, and to make new connections in the small and independent-press literary world in several ways. I first followed the University of Iowa MFA’s Twitter feed, as well as the literary magazines and presses it followed. This led me down a rabbit warren of possibilities and extraordinary reading material, and it introduced me to writers and editors. I selected Iowa because at the time, Iowa was the one I knew. A new writer can select most any literary magazine, press, editor, MFA program, author, or agent and follow the thread to new connections. N
ext, I looked up where authors I liked and identified with had published early in their careers, and I read those publications. … This lead to learning about other authors and meeting them on social media and learning about more publications and joining social-media groups about writing and publication. For data about submissions and calendars for opportunities, I subscribed to databases, listservs, and blogs about publications and contests such as Aerogramme Writers’ Studio, Duotrope, The Review Review, Paul McVeigh’s blog, Poets & Writers, The (Submission) Grinder, and Writer’s Digest.

  “While I was learning about this vast new world, I targeted two places, including one in particular I had run across years ago when they were relatively new. It had a classic, retro design and typography, and they published breathtaking stories with a quick response time that included feedback for submissions [of] up to 3,000 words. I cut my story to the bone and submitted 2,079 words to Bartleby Snopes.

  “Bartleby Snopes declined my submission with good ink—what my friends and I call a good rejection letter. Rick Taliaferro, the associate editor at the time, complimented my aptitude and pointed out why the story’s resolution was unsatisfactory in relationship to the initial conflict. This simple, fatal dissonance was not evident to me until Rick mentioned it, and I realized there were two storylines fracturing the narrative. I cut the original story essentially in half, revised it, and sent each one to two other places that published them immediately. I am as grateful to Bartleby Snopes for their rejection as I am to Thrice Fiction and Dew on the Kudzu for welcoming them. I ended up with seventy-seven drafts of those stories, and when Bartleby Snopes called for open submissions for new editors, I applied. They accepted.”