Rejections, What Rejections? My 2024 End-of-Year Writing Stats

Cailleach—Ireland’s divine hag—a creator deity and weather deity.

Each year I compile a reckoning of my writing life as told through acceptances and rejections. Which means I study my submission chart. Yesterday, I listed the acceptances on a yellow pad. I noted the books I'd published. I went through my Substack newsletter and counted the entries. And right now I'm pulling all these stats together to come up with a reflection on writing at seventy-two that will be, perhaps, of use and interest to other writers and readers. Here's something to reflect upon. I forgot to count the rejections and ghostings. Hah.

There's this imaginary old broad of a writer that I yearn to become. (My essay "Rogue Shark Scientist, Rogue Writer" explores this possibility.) This writer doesn't care so much about the public feting of her work in the form of awards or reviews or books published in mainstream presses. Rejection is nothing to her. This writer would leave that submission table be. But there's no chance. I'm going make two more columns on my yellow pad, one for rejections and another for ghostings, and then scroll down the submission chart making hash marks.

Here's why. Well, obviously I have not fully evolved into my grizzled geezer writer persona as of yet. And I'm not sure I want to completely. I'd rather use facets of it to expand what is possible for me. And a good reason to list rejections is to be of service to writers, especially those poking around the edges of submitting their work. Rejections can hurt so bad. Especially if you're writing personal essays or memoir. It's the thin skin for writing versus thick skin for submitting problem. That year I got to say I had an essay rejected twenty-nine times before The North American Review said yes, writers told me it helped.

Pause while I go count . . .

Rejections - 24

Ghostings - 4

Acceptances - 4 (The Millions, Uncharted, Narratively, ContiguousLyt)

Books published - 2 (My Withered Legs and Other Essays, The Sacrifice Zone: An Environmental Thriller)

Substack newsletter essays - 16 (Including this one as well as a ten part series on publishing an essay collection.)

Here's another reflection. I'm going through these stats and picking out the parts that only exist because of that old broad fantasy. I'm still writing the nonfiction that has led to the most acceptances, but I've gone back to my childhood love of Sturgeon and Le Guin and L’Engle to write fantasy and science fiction short stories. It's a genre I hadn't written in before. Short stories in themselves are something new I'm having to learn which means I have to be bad at it for a while. And SF&F is a whole new publishing landscape with its own, often unspoken, conventions to suss out.

But for me, this year’s breakthrough is The Sacrifice Zone: An Environmental Thriller. After five years of one hundred and forty-one rejections from agents and presses, I serialized the novel on Substack in 2023. And this year I self-published it in print and as an e-book. This is a wild departure from the more zipped-up into the literary world version of myself with its disdain for self-publishing. I re-read that manuscript after a year of having given up and decided the book had worth. The plot seemed exciting to me. I still loved the characters—especially the angry, crutch-using, lesbian lothario kick ass of an investigative reporter. So after another revision, I figured out ways to put it out into the world. That is such a rogue writer move.

2025 will suck. I'm thinking it'll help for me to keep learning from others and to develop new skills. And also to evolve toward the bravest part of myself—a hag, a Fury, a battle-axe, and also an old broad who sometimes wears her faded nightgown all day, cackles evilly, loves with enthusiasm, rests as needed, and has no shame about taking the good pain meds before she pushes her wheelchair’s joy stick to its limit.

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