100 Rejections in 2021

100 rejections. That’s my goal for 2021.

I wrote about it on the Ballarat Writers blog as the rejection connection, but I want to elaborate a little here.

One hundred rejections is a lot. So why do it? Partly as a kick in the pants to write more. But also to force myself to be more resilient.

Rejections hurt. You spend all this time thinking something up and bringing it to life and they throw it back at you. Well, they decide they don’t want to spend their space on it, anyway. So when I was thinking of doing this, I thought that maybe it would be easier to take if you were actually counting them and kind of waiting for them.

And you know what? It was. Earlier this week I received my first rejection for something that was sent out specifically for this project, in early November. Six weeks later I have my first rejection for this project. And I looked at the email, sighed a little, then went and checked when their submission window opens again. I made a note. In late January, I’ll have another crack.

Ninety-nine to go.

Status: One rejection

I don’t know what I’ll do if I get to the end of the year and have zero publications and over 100 rejections. Rethink my options, maybe? But the idea is to get used to having things out there, awaiting assessment, and to try and get a feel for what might be working and what isn’t. Obviously the goal is to have failed rejections: things you wrote that do actually get published. But if I send out however many bits of writing and none of them get published, then I need to learn to research better or write better.

At the time of writing I’ve misplaced my little book, but I’ve been tracking since the start of November (I think) and I have two other rejections under my belt. One for writing (not the one I mentioned above) and another for a role I applied for (didn’t even get interviewed, the bastards). I don’t know if I’m going to be counting them in my total.

At the moment I have two submissions out there in the world. One I submitted five days before the one that was rejected, so I’m sure judgement is coming. I have about four tabs open with various submission windows that close in December.

Better get cracking.

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