Hit 500 rejections on Submittable and it reset my whole approach to short stories

I was scrolling through my Submittable account last week and saw the counter hit 498 submissions total. When I sent number 500 to a small press in Portland, I paused and realized I had been treating rejections like failures instead of just part of the process. Each no taught me something about openings or pacing that I wouldn't have caught otherwise. Has anyone else tracked their submission stats and noticed a shift in how they write after a certain number?

3 comments

3 Comments

amy_anderson24d ago

Honestly, this hits on something bigger I've noticed in my own life. Rejections in any field teach you the same lesson if you let them - they force you to look at your work differently. It's like when I tried learning guitar and kept hitting wrong notes, each mistake made me pay attention to where my fingers actually were instead of just hoping for the best. The same thing happens with cooking, where a burned dish teaches you about heat control way better than a perfect recipe ever could. You gotta get knocked down a bunch of times to really figure out what works and what doesn't. So hitting 500 is just proof that you're paying attention and getting better, not that you're failing at anything.

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mark43624d ago

That guitar example is spot on. I had the same thing happen when I started running a few years ago. Kept getting shin splints and felt like I was going nowhere. Turns out I was landing on my heels wrong, but nobody told me till I hurt myself enough times to ask around. Now my form is way better. 500 rejections just means you're putting yourself out there and actually paying attention to what went wrong each time. That's how you unlock the next level.

patricia_gonzalez24d ago

Lmao yeah I burned so many pans before I learned that medium heat isn't just a suggestion.