996 Rejections

Well, certainly going the broken hearted way was a possibility for this, but lamenting all the times I've been rejected by women would probably be boring? Anyway, I'm taking this the route of poetry, which is totally interesting to all involved.

In the past year, I have submitted packets of poems or fiction 200 times to journals. (Not all at once, of course. I usually do send-outs of 40 packets , and I've done it 5 times in the past year). Of those 200 send-outs (usually 5 poems per packet, so that's 1000 poems [well, many are duplicates; I only have about 60 different poems I send out]), I have had four poems published. That's a rate of .4 %. For all the rejections, it's usually variations of this:

"Thank you for allowing us the chance to consider your work. We have read it carefully and have decided we can't use it at the present time. Good luck in placing it elsewhere."

That's the Quarterly West rejection slip I had sitting next to my computer that I just got in the mail. I got 5 rejections on Monday all at once, which is a lot even for me.

Now, I don't take any of the rejections personally; it's just a numbers game. But even having received almost 200 rejections in the past year alone, it still kind of bugs me every time. The poems I think are the strongest get rejected the fastest, I read the journals and the poems the publish all blow, people I don't like get good publications, etc.

The poetry/creative writing world is a competitive motherfucker. Luckily I'll make the big bucks out of this in the end. Oh, right. Poets are poor.

I don't know if I'm shedding any kind of light on this topic. The point is, it sucks getting rejected, even when I get a rejection slip in the mail every three or four days. Also, next fall when I apply to PhD programs, I'm going to get rejected by a bunch of those places, also. When I applied to MFA programs, I was denied by sixty percent of the places I applied. Only Houston and my safety, Colorado State accepted me. Luckily Houston was my first choice anyway, and is a pretty decent school.

None of this has to do with academics, or anything quantifiable. Maybe that's the worst part. I sometimes feel like people are judging me based on the work into which I put so much of myself. Which isn't true, but it's really something I've had to develop a callus for over time. Also, postage is expensive. 41 cents? I don't want to hear any more whining about the internets, post office.