Turn Rejections into Opportunities: What To Do when an Editor says “No”
This article is for: Everyone!
Although submitting poems to journals and magazines is a great idea—even for beginners—it does have one big downside:
Rejections!
These can be demoralizing—but they don’t have to be.
If you have a way of responding to rejections that makes you feel better about them, then a lot of their sting disappears. So in this artlcle I want to give you:
A simple way to turn rejections into affirmation.
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Rejection is inevitable—but trauma is not
Nobody wants to be rejected.
Whenever you send your poems somewhere, of course you hope that the editors or judges will love them and snap them up right away.
But the reality of submissions is that you’re going to be rejected—a lot. There are always thousands more poems sent out than editors have room for, so most will get a big fat NO.
Therefore, for your own emotional health, it’s important to be able to deal with rejections positively and sustainably.
Now, it’s simple to suggest consoling things, like “Think of every rejections as getting you one step closer to an acceptance,” or “Don’t take it personally, it happens to everyone”—but it’s much harder for the rejected poet—i.e. you!—actually to do those things.
So I find it helps to have an easy, practical action you can take after a rejection, to help you turn around any negative feelings.
An example that you might have heard of before is, “Every time you get a rejection, send those poems back out again straight away, and to two more places.”
I do think it’s important to submit again—but I think you can do more. I want to suggest an action to take before you send the poems out again.
Turn rejection into review
My idea is pretty straightforward:
When you get a rejection, make it an opportunity to look at those poems again.
So when an editor says No, instead of sending the poems right back out, take a short time to re-read them first.
Now, you do have to be careful here. When you’ve had a rejection, it’s all too easy to read your poems through the lens of “What’s wrong with them?!” or even “Why are my poems so terrible that no one wants them?!?”
I don’t mean that at all! If you look for reasons why your poems are bad, you’re bound to find some, but that’s not helping anyone.
Instead, I am suggesting balanced, thoughtful reflection, reading the poems to see what, if anything, you want to change—but only because you want to change it, not to try to fit the tastes of some imagined editor to judge.
That last point is really important. The best poems are true to how you think, feel, and talk. If you try to contort your poems in ways you think are “right,” or—even worse!— “what editors like,” they will sound false, and no one will want them.
But if you ignore the editor-pleasing voices in your head, I think this approach can yield strong results, because:
After a rejection is a good time to read your poems with more objectivity.
There are two reasons for this.
First, you haven’t looked at the poems for a while.
Most journals and magazines take several weeks, if not months to get back to you. During that time, you probably left the poems alone, because you thought they were “done”—why else would you have submitted them?
So when the rejection comes, and you look at them again, you can see them with clearer vision, simply because you are that much further away from the moment you last worked on them.
Also, looking at your work after a stranger has assessed it changes how you relate to it.
This one is a bit mysterious, and you might just have to trust me on it. I am not sure how it works myself.
I just know that, when I look at my poems that have been recently read and rejected by an editor, I often feel I see new things in them.
The mere fact that someone else’s eyes met these words, and weren’t convinced enough to want them, makes me look at them with less attachment—and more honesty, I guess I would call it, especially about parts of the poem that I had a hunch weren’t good enough, but that I had ignored or glossed over!
I am not looking for “Why are these poems so bad?” I’m still fair to the poems, I think—but I do often notice things like how it takes a poem too long to get going, or perhaps the ideas don’t go deep enough.
In any case, both of these factors can help you see things you missed before.
And then you can make changes—hopefully making the poems more to your liking, before their next submission.
What to look for when you review your rejected poems
So what might you see when you look back at your poems?
1. There are things you want to edit in individual poems
There are too many possibilities here for me to list all of them, but they might include:
The voice sounding false
Some images or descriptions seeming plain
The poem being too long—too wordy
The poem being too short—not developed enough
A part being unclear
Endings seeming incomplete.
All of these are easier to see when you’ve left the poem alone for a while.
Changes to individual poems are the most common things you’ll notice when you do your review.
2. One of the poems is weaker
Sometimes a bit of time away from a poem can help you see its flaws!
This is especially likely to happen if the poem was relatively new when you sent it out.
I’ve had this happen to me many times. I am in love with a poem because it’s new, so I submit it, and when it comes back I cringe! Turns out it really wasn’t ready to enter the world yet.
So now’s a great time to put that poem back into the “Needs Work” pile, and add a different poem in its place.
One you’ve spent more time redrafting!
3. One of the poems doesn’t fit
When you re-read your submission, you might suddenly see that it all forms a nice, coherent group—except for one poem!
The poem itself might be fine, or even excellent, but it just doesn’t jive well with its partners. Maybe it’s the only one that’s about a different topic, or it’s very different in form or tone.
All these are good reasons to swap it out for another poem.
4. The sequence doesn’t make sense
The order of poems in a submission to a journal or magazine doesn’t matter as much as it does when you’re creating a book manuscript, but it does matter some.
Editors are human too, and first impressions count—if your first poem is especially strong, that might color how they read the rest. (I confess to doing this in my few stints as an assistant editor! It’s just really hard to avoid.)
But if the first poem is weaker, or just more off-putting, then maybe the editor won’t read your later poems quite as carefully as they might have.
These kinds of sequencing issues can become apparent to you when you re-read after rejection.
If the order seems wrong when you re-read now, it definitely seemed that way to the editor. So try another one.
5. There’s space for a new poem
Sometimes there are no actual problems, but you still want to change a poem out for another one.
Maybe the new poem is one you’ve been working on since you made the submission, and now you realize that you prefer it to one of the other ones.
Or maybe you even feel you want to create a whole new poem for the next submission—one that fits with a theme perhaps, or fills in a gap.
The review gives you a chance to step back and make these decisions, so you’re happier with your next submission.
6. Maybe everything is just good already?
What if, when you re-read, you see nothing you would change? You’re happy with the work, and you don’t see any problems?
Well, great! This should reaffirm your belief in the poems.
They are still what you want to say, and how you want to say it—in which case this particular editor didn’t want them, but someone will!
So by all means, get them back out there again—choose a new journal, and submit them!
Take back the power
On a practical level, I find it’s not possible to do this after every rejection, but more than you might think—sometimes all it takes is a quick scan.
Whether you make changes or not, this method should allow you to neutralize any toxic effects of a rejection.
Either you still love the poems as they were, or you’ve edited them to strengthen them! Which means you can send them out again with fresh conviction.
They may still meet with another rejection—but that will just mean another chance to improve or reaffirm.
So if you use this method, rejection becomes in fact another part of your creative process!
Which puts you in control, and feeling better.
Next Steps: How to Review your Poems
Practice using this method right away!
Find your most recent rejection, and locate the poems you submitted.
Carefully prepare to read. DON’T just open the poems up and skim through them. The first reading after a rejection is a valuable moment and you need to make the most of it.
—Have each poem ready to read, whether on paper or screen, in the order in which you submitted them.
—Also have paper and pen right by you, so you can make immediate notes.Imagine you are an editor and these are poems sent to you by someone you’ve never even met. They are also just one small clutch of poems among many hundreds that you’re reading this week.
Read the first poem, all the way through. What are your overall impressions? As an editor, what might stand out to you—the best parts, the weaker spots?
—Note down your thoughts, quickly.Re-read the first poem, looking for more detailed impressions. Pay attention especially to any trouble spots. What is your first instinct about what could fix them?
—Note down your ideas.Repeat this with the second poem, and so on, until you’re done with them all.
But after the first read and notes (step 4 above), also think about does this poem follow on in an interesting way from the previous one?Finally, step back from the whole group, and ask, Do they all seem to fit together? Do any seem weaker or out of place?
Based on your notes, get working on any changes you want to make!
—Edit poems
—Move poems around
—Swap poems in and out of the group.
This might seem a long process, but once you get used to it, it takes less time than you think.
