Posted on by ajbrown · 2 Comments

Climbing the Wall

10/06/2024

A couple years ago, I hit a wall. Not literally, but definitely figuratively. The wall was tall and thick and made of all sorts of things, the biggest of those being heavy bricks called DOUBT. The mortar between those bricks was called DISCOURAGEMENT. I tried climbing the wall, but fell several times. Man, bruised ego, bruised confidence and just bruises happen when you fall from a wall you thought you could climb. Me and Humpty Dumpty were scrambled at the same time. 

For a while, I quit climbing the wall. It wasn’t worth it. Then one day I found myself standing at the wall again. I looked at it. Man, it was so high up. I couldn’t see the top. Looking at it was even more discouraging. I thought about climbing it again, but the effort really wasn’t there. I ended up slinking away, leaving all my climbing gear at the base of that wall.

At the beginning of the year, I stood back at the wall. I looked at it hard. Again, it looked so tall and so daunting and I thought ‘this just isn’t going to work.’ I walked away from it again. But this time I found myself not getting far enough from the wall so I couldn’t see it. Every day, I saw that wall of DOUBT and DISCOURAGEMENT. 

Instead of shutting my window and pulling the curtains, I did something I hadn’t done in years. I submitted a story somewhere. Granted, it was a submission that was by invitation, but it was still a submission. It got accepted. Hmm … Then I sent something to a contest and it didn’t get accepted. Still, the rejection letter was nice enough. Then I signed on with Memento Mori Ink to write a piece for them. 

The wall suddenly had a few cracks in it. I picked up my climbing gear from the base of he wall. 

In July, I decided to send out 31 stories in 31 days. I’ll talk about those stats in another post, but a few acceptance letters (along with quite a few rejections) made me think I could climb the wall and maybe tear it down one day.

With that said, part of climbing the wall is understanding some things about me, my writing and my desires. Do I really want to climb that wall? Yes, I do. Part of that is getting back to regular posts with Type AJ Negative. I used to posts pieces every Tuesday, then that got sporadic, at best, when I fell off the wall. Bruises will do that to you. 

This post is not to tell you what’s coming, about publications or any of those things. It’s just to tell you that Tuesday post on Type AJ Negative is a thing again. Some of those posts are going to be interviews with folks. Others will be about progress in climbing the wall. Others will be my stats for a given month (and overall). Other posts will be about the journey, some of those things I posted on my now shut down Patreon (damn, that wall).

If you’ve stuck with me all these years since I opened Type AJ Negative (twelve as of July), thank you. Come see me on Tuesdays. If you’re new, I hope it’s worth your time to be here.

Until we meet again, my friends, be kind to one another.

A.J. 

Posted on by ajbrown · 5 Comments

Applying For A Job In the Writing World

I had a cool blog all figured out, based on a quote by Albert Einstein, but then something else came along. Let me explain.

On Facebook I always see people posting about their successes in the writing world. You know, things like ‘hey my story just got accepted at such and such anthology,’ or ‘I just signed with an agent,’ or even better, ‘my novel was just picked up by The Most Awesome Publisher In the World.’ These are all great things and I enjoy reading how people have had success in the business.

You know what I don’t see a lot of? Go ahead, guess. I’ll give you three chances, and your first two don’t count.

I don’t see a lot of the failures. People just don’t post about them. I don’t see much about the books not being picked up, the short stories being rejected, the agonizingly excruciating process of seeking out agents and sending out queries. It’s as if no one wants anyone to know something of theirs wasn’t good enough for someone else.

Let’s face it, we all have those stories that no matter how good we believe they are, folks just don’t pick them up. It’s just the way it is.

Sure there are some out there who post about their rejections, but not many. Again, it’s like no one wants anyone to know about their failures.

Not me. I want the world to know about my failures in writing. I want them to see that, ‘hey, I was rejected,’ and ‘guess what? I was rejected again.’ It happens, so I decided at the beginning of the year to post my failures—not my successes. Sure, I’ll post some of the successes when they happen, but I want to embrace those rejections.

Let me clarify something here: I do NOT like rejection letters. I hate them. I loathe them. But they are part of the business and part of being a writer. If you don’t get rejections, then you’re probably not sending out any work.

A little statistic for you:

Since 2008 (and not including 2013’s stats) I have submitted 337 stories to various markets around the world. In that time frame I have had 98 acceptances, 192 rejections and 47 stories where I either never heard from the publisher or the publication folded.

To extend these numbers:

Acceptance rate: 29%
Rejection rate: 57%
Other: 14%

An acceptance rate of almost 3 out of every ten isn’t too shabby, but that means 71% of the stories were not accepted.

I won’t lie and say that I’m okay with those numbers, but truth be told, it could be worse.

Stick with me a little longer.

Before the beginning of the year, I set some goals for myself. One of those goals was to submit at least 52 stories this year. At one a week, I would reach the goal easy enough. I’m well on the way to that number—I have already submitted 15 stories.

I have already been rejected 5 times. I have one acceptance. That’s not a very good percentage. Not even close to the 29% mark I managed for the previous five years. The math is easy enough to do: Six responses, five rejections, one acceptance equals an acceptance rate of 16.7%.

Rejection. It’s part of life. It’s part of writing.

A great analogy for you:

The other day, a young lady where I work mentioned that she saw my posts on Facebook about the submissions and rejections. She said something to the effect of:

Writing is like applying for a job. You can’t take it personally when you don’t get the job.

I’ve pondered this and, yes, she was right. You might be qualified for the job, but sometimes there are other folks that are more qualified than you are. There are also instances where the job you applied for you are not suited for. Sometimes you even have what the job is looking for, but you are missing one or more qualities in the type of employee being pursued. Sometimes you are overqualified for a position. There could also be hundreds of people applying for that ONE spot.

And, just like not taking it personal when you don’t get a job, you can’t take it personal when you get rejected by a publisher or agent. It’s going to happen. No one that I know of has ever had a perfect submission rate.

Sure, acceptances are great, and I look forward to them just like anyone else. Yet, rejections keep you grounded, keeps you working hard. If you don’t have to work hard, you get complacent and lazy.

For me, thanks to a friend at work, I have a different perspective on the process. Each submission is a job application. When you think about it, that’s not too far off. You fill out an application with all of the pertinent information in order to get a job—a paying job.

When you submit a story, you edit and clean it up and you send it out in hopes of getting an acceptance, generally an acceptance that pays you. Just like a job. Sometimes you get the job, sometimes you don’t. Celebrate those times with your friends, shout it out to the world and bask in the glow of the acceptance. On the same token, celebrate the jobs you don’t get, don’t be ashamed of the rejections. If you can celebrate them, it makes it easier to deal with and easier to stay optimistic during those dry spells where acceptances are few and far between.

Here’s the trick: when you don’t get a job you want, don’t give up. Keep applying. Keep going to interviews. Keep putting your best foot forward. Eventually, you’ll get the job you want.

Do you see the similarities? Write. Edit. Submit. When you get a rejection, write, edit and submit again. You can’t give up because you get a rejection. If you do, you’ll never get an acceptance.

Until we meet again, my friends…