Today, I got my 1,000th fiction rejection.¹ It was a tiered rejection from Neon. Per my promise to myself, the journal responsible for the 1,000th rejection (or any acceptances while I was at 999²) gets a subscription³.
Looking back over my records, the first rejection in my “modern” era of rejections was a form rejection from The New Yorker (the story in question. “Confiteor” is something that I’ve since trunked).
My acceptance rate in that time has been 2.06% with 20.8% of my rejections being personalized or tiered, including personal rejections from The New Yorker and The Atlantic, so I’m apparently doing something right (although I could certainly stand to be doing things “righter”). For the year so far, my acceptance rate is 5.7% with 40% of my rejections being personalized/tiered.
- Strictly speaking, it’s a bit over 1,000 rejections, but I’m not counting the scattered rejections I got when I was an undergrad or in my 20s before I tried not to write. This is my “modern” period beginning in 2007.
- If I get any acceptances before I hit 1,001, I’ll subscribe to those journals as well.
- Had it been a journal that was online only, I would look for a donation option.
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