Don't Self Reject

by Mandira Pattnaik

Sydney Rae

Turns out that the Indian news portal that reported certain probable names who may be awarded the Nobel Literature Prize for 2023, and my last column partially based on it, got it all wrong. “Reading the Norwegian writer and winner of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature Jon Fosse’s Scenes from a Childhood (2018) reminded me of Robert Walser and Franz Kafka. To be precise: Walser’s Berlin Stories (2006) and A Schoolboy’s Diary (2013), both originally published in 1956, and Kafka’s short prose pieces.” says Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee. Praise such as this about the current winning writer’s style is definitely intriguing to someone like me who has not read Jon Fosse yet, but is a great admirer of Kafka. I read a report quoting Jon Fosse saying to the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that he was “surprised but also not” to have won. “I’ve been part of the discussion for 10 years and have more and less tentatively prepared myself that this could happen,” he said. I love Fosse’s candid way of putting it, and also recognize he had obviously been rejected the other nine times.

The thought brought me memories of some of my biggest acceptances and how they had been rejected left, right and center numerous times before being selected. For example, the flash CNF piece “Stitches,” loosely based on a brief time I was a seamstress, found a home in Hypertext Magazine in December, 2021.

I could say: “Look, I’d been part of the discussion at 10 places and had more and less tentatively prepared myself that this could happen!” Just like Jon Fosse!

What I am pointing at is that rejections are such a big part of all writers’ lives. I mean, just think about it: How often something you submit goes on to gather editors’ comments like “almost there,” “nearly went on to get selected,” “very close for us,” and you’ve actually cried a bucketful because you knew this would be the case but what you were really hoping for was something a notch higher — an acceptance!

Both writers and editors know all this is part of the process. You must have, at some point, also received the note “we can’t possibly select all the great work that we receive” in your decline email, implying perhaps that yours was one of the great works that they had received, and you had, at that very moment, sincerely wished that you had a magic wand so the publishing world could be pulled and stretched to be as gargantuan as the universe itself, where every great work had space!

Jokes apart, in this scenario, what could be worse than getting rejected? Here’s what: one thing that many writers do, myself very much included, is that they self-reject. In my time actively submitting, that is one hard thing that I have learnt. I have lost out on opportunities because I was (and still am) fearful and in awe of certain fancy venues that I thought/think were/are way beyond my league.

Excuse me, but what do you mean by ‘fancy’? readers might ask. Well, as a writer who can ill-afford too many fee-based submissions at once, for me, ‘fancy’ means a strange, mysterious equation I can’t quite explain. Let’s say, it is a cocktail of the reputation of the publication, years continuously publishing and whether they pay their contributors. Until I figure out a better formula for my ‘goal’ publications, and am convinced otherwise, I’m afraid I simply can’t abandon my vague-ish idea of ‘fancy’.

By self-rejecting, writers, sadly, lower their chances of getting selected. As we all know, a combination of factors determine what gets selected into an issue, but without submitting, especially when the process is long-drawn and human tastes are widely varying, the work never gets a fair chance. My short-short piece “Dark Matter” (about the universe, toads, and everything in-between) just found itself in Wigleaf TOP50. It had collected 20+ decline notes before Contrary Magazine (5% acceptance rate) offered it publication AND also nominated the piece for the Pushcart Prize last year.

Such are the vagaries of writing life. Fellow contemporary writers attest to the same set of experiences, thus establishing a pattern of extreme unpredictability in the publishing world. I guess, subject to future empirical data backing-up to the contrary, I can safely say that only the most sensitive minds and toughest hearts can handle writing life!