Adventures with Jenny Goodguts

The plan: I am setting out to collect 100 rejections.

Timeline: We have to be flexible in life but I’m thinking four years which equals about two submissions per month.

Parameters: I have to submit the best work that I can*, the objective is to have my work accepted. By celebrating each rejection, it makes it easier to try, it adds a fun element to the trying, there is victory in defeat, which isn’t even really defeat but a stepping stone to the next thing, a way of learning, and so much better than just sitting here wishing.

* With respect to the best work I can, I can’t just sit on something for three years because maybe I can make it better someday. I have to finish a piece to the best of my ability and send it off. Not all of the perfectionism(ing).

Types of submissions: I have written pieces in mind. But I will be flexible. Anything that I am willing to put myself out there for and risk being rejected can count as a rejection. So, once my book is ready, if I go to a local bookstore and ask them if I can do a reading and they say no, that’s one rejection. So it is feasible that I could get to 100 a lot faster than four years.

When will I start? Well, truth be told I’ve already started. I submitted my first piece, a poem, to The New Yorker in October. I sent it off and felt very excited, immediately, about getting my very first rejection, and it being from The New Yorker. I am looking forward to printing that email and putting it into the empty spot on my wall where right now there are no rejections because I have never submitted my writing to anyone for publication. Not true. I had a poem published in junior high. I also had a few poems published in high school. The junior high poem, about cats, was cute. The high school poems were embarrassing, not because they were bad (they were) but because they were thoughtless, insensitive, just flexing my clever muscles and nothing else. I have had other writing published, but always because I was employed by a company to write something for their in-house publication.

How will I track it? You know that I already have a spreadsheet.

What will change between now and the one hundredth rejection? I don’t know. I’m excited to see.

Can I submit the same rejected piece to a new place? Huh, I hadn’t thought of that one. Seems like I could get to 100 pretty quickly in that case. I was thinking I’d have to write at least 100 different things but of course that isn’t true. If I wrote just one mediocre thing and submitted it to 100 places that would do the trick. Well, let’s stick with 100. It’s a nice-sounding number. If I get to 100 and haven’t learned something interesting then we can make it the 1,000 rejections project, or some other number like Charles Dickens’ birthday or something. Okay, I just googled E.B. White’s birthday, July 11. So if 100 turns out to be a cinch then maybe we’ll go for 711. But perhaps we should just get started?

Most publications don’t accept submissions that have been previously posted (even to little-known blogs) so I cannot share my submissions here. But any published work I will certainly celebrate (possibly even more than I celebrate each accumulated rejection) and will of course share with my devoted readers as soon as they are available to share.

I think that covers it.

Yay!

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