Ten Years of Rejectomancy: The Pre-Blog Years

A few months ago, Rejectomancy turned ten years old, and I celebrated that momentous occasion with a guest post from the supremely talented and supernaturally prolific Ai Jiang. (Check out that post here.) This series, however, will focus on my own submission efforts over the decade I’ve been inflicting them on y’all through this blog. We’ll do one year at a time, and I’ll give you all the crusty details on subs, rejections, and acceptances. That said, to kick things off, we need to talk about what came before the blog, a prequel, if you will. This will be the only post to cover multiple years, and I’ll give you all the deets for 2012, 2013, and 2014. I’ll be pulling all the data from Duotrope, as usual. Let’s get to it!

2012

Exciting, huh? Six whole submissions with no acceptances. Obviously, I took my first tentative steps into submitting short fiction in 2012. I was employed in the gaming industry at the time, and I had plenty of writing credits there, but no general fiction pubs to my name yet. All six submissions ended in form rejections. Sadly, the six markets I submitted to in 2012 are now defunct or on indefinite hiatus. (This will be a running theme.)

2013

Still nothing much to talk about in 2013, though I did send more submissions. Again, all subs ended in rejection, but I did get a few personal notes on a story that would eventually become my first-ever acceptance. Once more, most of the markets I was subbing to in 2013 (ten of fifteen) are now closed or on indefinite hiatus. Although 2013 was ultimately disappointing, I was writing better material, and I felt that first acceptance was right around the corner.

2014

Success! I sold my first story, “Night Games,” to the now-defunct Devilfish Review on May 1st, 2014. To say I was excited is a bit of an understatement. In fact, I scared the shit out of my wife and our cats when I bellowed “FUCK YEAH!” when the acceptance email came through. I went on to sell another four stories in 2014, giving me a total of five for the year and a not-too-shabby acceptance percentage of 13.2%. I also made a cool hundred bucks, which, of course, isn’t much, but getting paid anything for my fiction felt pretty good. This was also the year I figured out that I have knack for flash fiction, and I started writing and submitting A LOT of it toward the end of 2014. In addition, I began to think that folks might be interested in an honest and detailed account of my submission journey. Little did I know I’d soon sign myself up for an entire decade of no’s and not for us’s. 🙂

And there you have at, my nascent, pre-blog submission efforts. As this series goes on, I’ll devote an entire post to each of the ten years Rejectomancy has been in operation. Hopefully, it’ll be inspirational, educational, or at a minimum, entertaining. 🙂

Questions or opinions about my first baby submission steps? Tell me about it in the comments.