The Tao of Receiving Rejections

Demystifying the agony of an essential part of being a writer

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

You’ve sent your best story or essay or poem to the top magazine in your field. You’ve waited a day, a week, a month, half a year for a response. And then you get a notification on your phone: it’s an email from that top publication! And it’s addressed to you by name!

But… it’s not an acceptance. It’s the dreaded rejection letter. And you feel yourself deflating like a popped balloon. You just weren’t good enough.

Sound familiar? We’ve all been there. Even when one knows about the process behind rejections and what that letter means, some rejections can still be crushing. You believed in your work… why didn’t they?

But — and this is an important detail to consider — rejection letters aren’t all uniform. There are higher tier rejections, personalized rejections, rejection wording codes, and a whole slew of other things that might have escaped your notice in the emotional moment of receiving that “No.” So let’s take a look.

Accepting the reality of chasing unicorns

First of all, if you’re a nail biter the moment you hit “submit,” there are two useful resources to help you track what the editorial staff is doing in terms of processing…