On meeting (exceeding) my goal of getting 52 rejections in a year

“There’s a piece about a woman who got 101 rejections in a year in the New York Times, today,” Loverpants mentions.

Perhaps for other couples, the person who mentioned this to the other might expect to have another day to live, or a few hours at most. Who casually teases the other with rejection tales, casual-like, as if it’s a Crossfit workout of the day tip? But in our particular entanglement, this teaser was a complete aphrodisiac. I felt so seen. So known. So loved. I wanted to jump that man’s bones. And also to read the New York Times immediately.

At the beginning of the year, I had set out to do the same as the writer in the NYT. I challenged myself to seek 52 rejections, one per week, for my writing. I wanted to play the numbers game. I know this works for e-bay sellers, for example. The more pairs of Nikes they list, the more sales they see. Plus, momentum is powerful. Objects in motion continue in motion unless flatly and coldly rejected by a non-paying literary magazine, as the Law of Literary Motion goes, which Isaac Newton probably knew but just failed to disclose since his poetry wasn’t very good either. Ego! When your goal is to maintain momentum, though, there’s no time to stew over a door slamming shut. You have to find another potential door to knock on. You’re very busy trying to come up with your salutation once you do.

I submitted my work a total of 159 times in 2018. Most were for publications I read regularly, some were for more obscure literary magazines, and a couple were for residencies/conferences. Here is the breakdown:

159 SUBMISSIONS
131 REJECTIONS
13 ACCEPTANCES
15 STILL WAITING TO HEAR BACK

The math isn’t exactly the kind of pretty pie graphable fair compare. These aren’t the numbers that show clearly how the sweat equity leads to success. The measuring stick for writers is different and personal and ever-evolving. And it’s always set to music, trust me. It’s just like “Grey’s Anatomy” over here any time an editor’s e-mail appears. ::cue emo song by Ingrid Michaelson::

For me, I was determined to place my writing in new outlets. This was the first year I had pieces published in Slate.com and the Washington Post. These opportunities were thrilling for me. THRILLLLLLLING like getting sung to by the waiters wearing sombreros at Chi Chis in the 80s! I enjoyed the work and tore my hair out over it, as well. The process was not glamorous and rewriting three different drafts for one story for one editor was a deep dish of humble pie. I still loved the work, in the way one loves anything hard that reaps rewards.

The numbers also don’t represent the relationships forged, both with amazing editors who are consummate professionals, as well as with sources who trusted me with their vulnerability and the details of their stories. I got to be in touch with several people with whom I’ve not been in touch for years. And I got paid to do so. That’s some awesome time travel, cruising back to the past where you met someone and meeting them in the present where they share meaningful details of their lives. I’m grateful for all of it.

The psychology behind aiming for rejection rather than acceptance, as the NYT piece says, is essentially exposure therapy. If rejection is the fearsome activity, one needs to pursue it so much and so doggedly that it loses its mystique and therefore its potency. In pursuing rejection, did rejection lose its sting for me? I’d have to say that it did. I don’t think I realized how much it was unseating me to have my work dismissed or ignored. I knew I was kind of a precious pain whenever I couldn’t scrape myself off the floor because an editor didn’t like my penchant for portmanteaus. I just knew that I had sad feeeeeelings. Knowing it was my job, though, to take a rejection and turn it into forward motion—that is, to find somewhere else to try to place the work — reframed the process for me. A dead end was actually just a cul-de-sac where I could turn around and find somewhere else in the neighborhood to visit.

As much as I’d like to end on the note that I’m aiming for twice as many rejections in the new year, I’d say that I may take a different, less bullish approach. The momentum of seeking rejection helped me to overcome a lot of the fear I hadn’t realized was holding me back from doing the damn thing. The rejection momentum seeped into the rest of my life, and I started to recognize other areas where I had been listening to a whole lotta noise. My big mood heading into 2019 is to carve out time for wellness, and I include my writing in this. I feel better when I’m writing, but, I’m not totally convinced that it always needs to be published by a third party. So I’m hoping to do a good bit more on this platform. And you? What are you resolving or reaffirming in the New Year?

Drunken Walking and the most important thing I have done in 2018

The other day, whilst walking Puppy, we passed a group from a daycare that had planned an epic trip to a football field. I could imagine the teachers discussing this voyage they were about to mount, and how it was the perfect day to be outside and feel the warmth of the sun and a little crisp breeze on the air. How if they left now, right after morning snack and just before lunch, they would be able to totally rock the field without any ornery tots falling asleep or jonesing for goldfish crackers. How if they just turned these kidlets loose on the open field, it might be the best day of their entire wee little lives.

I suspect it was. The best day of everyone’s life. Because for me, merely a spectator, I was completely intoxicated by the unbridled joy in their ruddy little faces. Oh my. The sweet reckless abandon of their little wobbly gaits, a bit drunken looking and still finding their sea legs. They darted in all directions. Some of the sturdier tots were taking to a plastic ball, giggling and kicking it back and forth like they had invented soccer just in that very moment. Others had not yet learned to walk so they were crawling, excitedly caterwauling across the football field toward touchdown territory. Maybe they’d done this drill before.

I beheld this tableau of humans at their best and most unadulterated and it moved me in a way I cannot overstate. I thought about how God presents us with opportunities, wide open football fields full of chances and new experiences, but too often, instead of running arms flailing eyes wide tongues peeling out of our mouths excited toward the Wide Open Wonder, we are content to stay strapped into our strollers, chilling and checking our e-mail, sated by the endless scrolling of endless screens.

I wouldn’t normally have been strolling past a football field at 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, except for the fact that I have a Puppy who needs to get out the zoomies sixteen times a day and I live at a boarding school where athletic turf is a common sight. I can well promise you that I considered all this an interruption, though, before we traversed the football field. Because Puppy is the most stubborn creature on four legs, I am typically dragging/lifting/shlepping/bribing her across great expanses of terra firma. On this particular morning, though, she was walking me, and I was also being held. Held by a God who sees me and sees my agenda and crinkles his eyes and laughs uproariously at all the things I think I am meant to accomplish, that carry such weight. He holds me still for a moment and turns my face to see the sun and the patchy grass and the little drunken munchkin prophets speaking life into my raggedy heart.

I have done some things in 2018 that have earned my work a spot on the refrigerator, but by far the best thing I have done is adopt this stupid cute Puppy. She forces me out into the world and forces me to be neighborly. She has interrupted my work and my sleep and completely foiled all the plans I had made to not notice the matchless beauty, to not feel the warmth of the sun.

Review: The Ministry of Ordinary Places

If you read FALLING FREE, Shannan Martin returns with an even more lyrical and soulful memoir of her life as a radical neighbor lover. As a member of her launch team, I received an advance copy.

I was blessed so much by THE MINISTRY OF ORDINARY PLACES and I especially appreciated the very tactical ideas Martin offers for loving our neighbors. The author also takes a necessary and admirable stance against a lot of what I can only refer to as ministry "gimmicks" that churches in the First World have adopted as de rigueur. Examples of this included "pop-up" ministry events, short-term missions that do more harm than good, or just ill-advised donation drives. The love the author has for her neighbors and her neighborhood is so palpable, and the book is an inspiring look at how one family can be a beacon simply by choosing to stay. 

Pairing my own fave coffee mug with this book’s darling cover.

The only aspect of the book with which I really struggled was the lack of discussion of boundaries. Much of the ministry of being embedded in a community was familiar to me, since I have lived at the schools where my husband and/or I worked. It can be very overwhelming at times to field requests at all hours of the day and night from those one has been called to serve. As a mother, I believe my first order of ministry is to my family. Sometimes living in an insular community, one has to set hedges around one's family in order that the family not get exploited. The author makes mention of how her husband sought counseling for anxiety, and I was grateful for that. As a Christian, we can see from Jesus' example that there were times he reserved only for his prayer time, that he disappointed people by being unavailable because of his priorities. I wanted to hear more about that -- that giving freely of ourselves is still something we need to have discretion about so that we're not placing our family as a sacrificial lamb on the altar. The Martins are fully committed to their ministry of being present, and there are certainly instances mentioned where simply being present is hard. Still, I was left to wonder what they did when and if their children just sort of wanted their parents to themselves (?) Projecting here, but my kids help alongside me in ministry but sometimes they have bad attitudes about it and it's usually because I'm not devoting enough time to them. I think this begs the question: Can you live in the upside-down kingdom while still keeping your priorities in order? I don’t have the answer and I think anyone living in close community is looking for guidance about how to do it well.

I think my favorite chapter was about the Jail Ministry house. Martin explains the real disparity for families with an incarcerated person reentering society and the high cost of housing, job hunting that befalls individuals/families because of time served. I was so moved by the story of the Jail Ministry house and feel inspired to explore opportunities to serve inventively in this vein in my own sphere of influence.

I highly recommend this book if you are impressed to live and experience the Gospel in a less abstract and more practiced way, to have your eyes wide open to the biddings and beckonings of Divinity that hasn’t given up on our spinning planet yet.