Dear Epiphany: Survival Tips from the Multiple Rejection Survival Club
American flash fiction superstar Epiphany Ferrell has come aboard as our Rejection Survival Club Agony Aunt. She and will be here to answer your most vexing questions. Enjoy her first column.
Dear Epiphany,
When I receive multiple rejections for the same story and yet to me, that story is one of my finest, does it mean there is:
a. something wrong with the editors
b. a witch has put a curse on my story
(or)
c. I'm not writing the fashionable/trendy kind of subject matter editors are more likely to publish?
Yours Truly,
Am I Cursed
Dear Am I Cursed,
If your story is in explicit violation of a previous agreement you made with a witch, then yes, b may well be the answer. Consider working on a really good apology. However, it is entirely possible it’s a simple matter of square peg, round hole. Think how out of place a Jackson Pollack piece would feel in an exhibit of Hudson Valley painters! You don’t want that for your story. You do want it to stand out, of course, but you also want it to be in appropriate company.
Seek out journals that seem to publish the kind of thing you’ve written. “But I have done that!” you say? If you are fortunate to have some feedback on your story, do pay attention. You needn’t follow suggestions to the letter—you needn’t follow any at all. Consider it, though, an opportunity for directed play with the story in the privacy of your own writing space. Remember: editors don’t offer constructive criticism merely to be nice. Rather, they see something in the story or in your writing style that makes them want to tell you to keep trying.
And that is the one hard and fast rule: Keep trying. It’s possible that your story is so far ahead of the curve that it might take several months or even a year of steeping before the world is ready for it.
Don’t feel bad if you have to let a story sit for a bit. When you do pull it out, reading it will be a fresh experience, and you’ll be able tighten any loose ends that might appear during the resting period. One final bit: Spellcheck. Just to be sure.
Good luck, and welcome to the Multiple Rejection Survivor Club, of which I, too, am a member.
-Epiphany Ferrell
Epiphany Ferrell’s stories appear in more than 80 journals and anthologies, including Wigleaf, Ghost Parachute, New Flash Fiction Review, and the anthologies Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions. She is a Pushcart nominee, and a Prime Number Magazine Flash Fiction Prize recipient. She lives near the Shawnee National Forest.