Thank you so much for this post! Besides anything else, it’s incredibly encouraging to see that excellent writers like yourself get their fair share of rejections too. I remember coming across one of your short stories that had won some huge prize or other while first trying to find out how to get published and being very impressed. (Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title, but it was about a guy who thinks he sees a body being dumped from a railway bridge.) Also, that’s a very good point about the necessity to keep track of one’s submissions!
Thanks for your thoughts Veronika. Yes, all writers get rejections, and I’ve had many along the way. And I will no doubt post something in the future about rejection and how I try to deal with it.
I think the story you might be referencing is A Notion Of Limbs, which was up for the Manchester Fiction Prize, a strange, dark tale that again was not written for a competition, but fitted the word count for that one, and seemed to fit the kind of work they liked. That was 2019 I think?
And yes, keeping track of submissions is common sense. And one thing I would say is that some stories take much longer to place. I’ve had some that have had more than 10 rejections and been through some tough rewrites before finding a good home. As ever, persistence and resilience are the key.
Love this post Ken. Just subscribed and this really resonated for me. Esp interested to read that Jennifer’s Piano didn't even make the LL of a major prize, a few months before winning the Fish competition. As you say "This is all a subjective process, done by humans who might be having a bad day, or have particular tastes, or have seen something similar in the pile of stories they are reading, or didn’t get the intertextuality, or didn’t like the way the story was delivered." Thanks for the uplift.
Thanks Cole. Yes, that sort of thing happens a lot. I was also long listed for the BBC National Short Story Award with a story that had previously been rejected half a dozen times (from memory). So persistence is key.
Thank you so much for this post! Besides anything else, it’s incredibly encouraging to see that excellent writers like yourself get their fair share of rejections too. I remember coming across one of your short stories that had won some huge prize or other while first trying to find out how to get published and being very impressed. (Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title, but it was about a guy who thinks he sees a body being dumped from a railway bridge.) Also, that’s a very good point about the necessity to keep track of one’s submissions!
Thanks for your thoughts Veronika. Yes, all writers get rejections, and I’ve had many along the way. And I will no doubt post something in the future about rejection and how I try to deal with it.
I think the story you might be referencing is A Notion Of Limbs, which was up for the Manchester Fiction Prize, a strange, dark tale that again was not written for a competition, but fitted the word count for that one, and seemed to fit the kind of work they liked. That was 2019 I think?
And yes, keeping track of submissions is common sense. And one thing I would say is that some stories take much longer to place. I’ve had some that have had more than 10 rejections and been through some tough rewrites before finding a good home. As ever, persistence and resilience are the key.
Love this post Ken. Just subscribed and this really resonated for me. Esp interested to read that Jennifer’s Piano didn't even make the LL of a major prize, a few months before winning the Fish competition. As you say "This is all a subjective process, done by humans who might be having a bad day, or have particular tastes, or have seen something similar in the pile of stories they are reading, or didn’t get the intertextuality, or didn’t like the way the story was delivered." Thanks for the uplift.
Thanks Cole. Yes, that sort of thing happens a lot. I was also long listed for the BBC National Short Story Award with a story that had previously been rejected half a dozen times (from memory). So persistence is key.