On My 200th Publication

Making Sense of Acceptances

On March 28^th I got an email from the editors of Drip Literary Magazine. “We read your story and wow we loved it!  We would like to publish Edge Play in our upcoming issue. Thank you for trusting us with your work!” 

Good news. It meant I could stop rewriting “Edge Play.” That’s what I do with fiction. I write a story, then after the second or third draft when I can’t do anything more with it, I send it to an editor. That gives me breathing room. A day later, or week later, or nine months later, I get a response, usually a rejection, at which time I can decide to revise the story or to send it out again “as is.” Once it’s accepted, it’s done and I can move on.

Sometimes a story gets accepted right out of the gate. That’s happened a half dozen times. One story was rejected 76 times before it found a home. “Edge Play” was one of my hard to place stories because it dealt with a convicted murderer released from prison who started a taco stand, and because, duh, it dealt with edge play. Ten editors felt it wasn’t “right for us at this time” before the folks at Drip Literary “wow we loved it.”

I average eight rejections for every acceptance. I have forty-nine stories in the mail, some simultaneously submitted to multiple magazines. That means I’ll probably have another dozen publications in the next six months, plus another hundred rejections. (I stopped counting rejections after the first couple thousand.)

The second reason why the acceptance of  “Edge Play” was important was because it was my 200^th publication. I’d been poised at 199 for a couple months, and I was getting antsy. “What if I never get the 200^th?” When I went to record the acceptance I found it was actually my 201^st. Somehow I’d missed the 200^th celebration. I know why. My writing isn’t about the numbers anymore. I write to be read. An acceptance means someone will read it. Kudos.