On Rejection and Dwelling in Possibility

Iris Murdoch—you know I love her—said that a bad review was about as interesting as whether it is raining in Patagonia. I tend to think about rejections this way. (Except: isn’t it interesting whether it’s raining in Patagonia? Shouldn’t it be, to a poet? Anyway, anyway…)

But here is the thing: I think about rejections as uninteresting when I am at my healthiest: mentally, physically, spiritually. When my chronic pain in under control, by some seasonal miracle/existential lottery. When my mental health is bobbing along like a rubber ducky in relatively calm bath water. When I’m not dwelling, to quote one Anne of Green Gables, in the “depths of despair.”

Roll back the camera to 2022, when I began trauma therapy, and found myself wildly outside my window of tolerance. I was hypoaroused after therapy sessions, which basically translates to a numb or dissociated state, which required (for me) a lot of processing time spent listening audiobooks and sewing. This whole year was not a good time for me to be submitting and receiving rejections on creative work—the emails literally made me flinch, and I deleted them as swiftly as possible—so I stopped sending work out. My inbox became peaceful, and my mind with it. I safeguarded myself, as much as I could. I wrote a little, but mostly I listened to audiobooks a LOT: Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker—books I could not have read before the therapy itself.

Consequently, in the year following this intense therapy (2023), I published a single poem. It was in a small journal (shout out to River Mouth Review), with editors I knew and trusted. Which brings me to my first point: I was in a survival state in 2022, and I reeled myself back and in, made my world smaller. It felt safer. For those of you coming back to writing after an absence of any kind, it might feel good to start with smaller journals, or a journal with an editor you know and trust, OR you might feel great sending your work out to a wide variety of journals. Do what feels best to you at that time, and be open to the fact that you will feel differently at different times in your life: moving, changing jobs, having a child, elections, health events, new school—any life events also affect how you feel about your writing, yourself, who you are, what it means to be you in the world, sending your work out, sharing it with others. Be gentle with yourself as you recalibrate, as your life changes. It is yourself that you revise.

My friend Benjamin Garcia said to me that he noticed a huge difference in acceptances when he began to send work out to more places—“…it’s a numbers game,” he said—and that it was helpful for him to see that, to prove it to himself. Yes, you receive more rejections, sending more work out. You also, potentially, receive more acceptances.

A word about where you send your attention—I do think it matters where we spend our energy, where we dwell, what we meditate on. Don’t meditate on your rejections. Don’t dwell there. I dwell in possibility, wrote Dickinson. I think the universe gives back to you what you give to it—I grew up fundamentalist evangelical, so know that this statement would be considered highly suspect by my own tradition. Alright, then, let me try another angle: it looks so, so bad to complain about rejections. Think for a moment about the optics: we all get rejections. We all empathize with the low feelings. But there are so many hardworking (majority unpaid!) editors and readers out there, at whom you are kind of complaining when you complain about rejections, and the same level of energy and joy doesn’t seem to be being put into the acceptances. Maybe try the practice of posting about acceptances only for a little while. See how that changes your social media experience for you. I say this on a personal note: I find the posting of screenshots of acceptances as well as rejections kind of jarring—as an editor, I don’t expect my correspondence to be posted online for thousands of people to read. But I guess that’s the author’s call, and I do think sharing positive energy is a hell of a lot better than dwelling in something as uninteresting as the fact that you poem didn’t fit the issue or jive with a particular reader on a particular day.

So you received a rejection—what now? Consider the poems in the packet. Do you still like them? Want to swap any of them out for work you are more excited about? Any revisions to make? Better title? Any spelling errors in your cover letter (hello, me this week)? Revise that packet, and send it back out. Dwell in possibility.

Find an accountability buddy, and update them on your submissions. I have a writer friend I let know when I send work out, because it helps me to know I’m reporting to someone—I need all the help I can get! Stop feeling alone in your rejections. Dwell in possibility.

I have noticed $3 fees are so much more common these days, so a word on cost and submitting. Y’all. I co-founded and co-edit a small press, River River Books, which Amorak Huey and I strive to make as self-sustaining as possible. Yes, we put our own money (several thousand) into starting it, but we have a business account and the press runs on its own dollars now. I also have a book coming out in the spring (Larks, which you can preorder now!), and I do not have a publicist myself. So I consider the $3 fee both a way of helping out small presses, because I know the costs, and a way of spending pennies on the publicity dollar. Just think about it—you place a poem in a magazine, and you also place your bio, and your book title, and your website. If someone likes your poem, maybe they look up your work. Publishing new work is one of the best ways to support your books, new or past.

Final thought is that sometimes you have to bless the rejection. Lord, there are rejections that have kept work from being in the world that, upon thought and reflection, my god I did not actually want in the world. Sometimes a no from the universe is a form of protection. Sometimes your bad luck saves you from worse. Remember that poem in The Nation? Yeah, baby. Anything that has you hiding your head or apologizing or donating to relief groups or or or—well, that’s karma.

Bless the rejection. Dwell in possibility.

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I shared this addendum on Bluesky:

Something I wish I had included here is the fact that acceptances ALSO affect rejections—a single poem acceptance can soften SEVERAL subsequent rejections! And there’s some kind of proportional math at work, too, e.g., a manuscript acceptance takes care of many, many smaller rejections, for months, even a year of rejections, or more (it did, for me). 📚✍️ And prior to my first book, rejections were much more difficult, because of course a sense of validation is linked to one’s first book, even though you are a good writer before you publish a full-length collection.

All to say: many factors are involved when you receive and emotionally experience a rejection—a rejection is never simply a rejection, so consider multiple factors in your life, and be kind to yourself. And dwell in possibility. 💜