Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

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Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach episodes

May 30, 2017 Ep 103: The Trouble with Memoir Is a Wiggly Mind
Memoir depends upon memories, yet memory is a living thing—a slippery, unreliable thing.
In her book The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr describes memory as "a pinball in a machine—it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off" (Karr 1).
How can we trust this tilting machine to deliver something whole and wholly reliable? If we want to incorporate even short memories into our work to serve as illustrations, Karr says, “even the best minds warp and blur what they see…For all of memory’s power to yank us back into an overwhelming past, it can also fail big time” (5). She sends copies of her manuscripts to people who appear in her books because she doesn’t trust her “wiggly mind” (5).
This week is my grandmother's birthday. If she were alive, we'd be celebrating her 121st birthday. And when her birthday comes around, even though she’s been gone for decades, I still remember the coo of mourning doves in her small Midwestern town, and the sensation of walking on cool linoleum in her kitchen, and the taste of soft sugar cookies with gumdrops pressed in the center.
My parents would drop me off to spend a week with her in the summertime, and I loved sleeping in the front bedroom under fresh sheets spread taut and tidy over the big double bed with its high and regal ornate wood-carved headboard—part of a set she’d inherited from a cousin. Grandma would fold a loosely woven “summer weight” blanket over the sheets, and for a long time I felt like the best of summer was somehow linked to that pastel blanket.
In the narrow, horizontal window of that bedroom, she displayed a collection of colored glass bottles. Light streamed through the blues, yellows, pinks, purples, and greens—morning magic. I blinked myself awake, rested and safe.
In my memory I can still walk through every room, from the baker's cabinet in the corner of the kitchen to the daybed along the dining room wall; from the collection of gardening books on shelves in the living room, to the glass jar of leftover yarn balls sitting next to a chair in Grandma's bedroom.
I wander out the screen door and hear the squeaky stretch of the spring that pulls the wooden frame shut behind me with a solid "thunk." Under the grape arbor, I pluck a Concord grape, manipulating the skin off with my teeth to suck the sweet, cool insides and chew the sour skin for a few seconds before spitting it out.
In my mind, baby's breath still blooms white behind the garage and orange daylilies line the side of the house. My grandma made rag rugs on a loom set up on a small porch. I can see its threads and recall how she’d slide the shuttle across the strings and pull the long wooden beater forward to bind the strips of cloth snug and firm, her feet pressing pedals as the strings shifted to weave.
When Grandma passed away in 1987, the house was sold, remodeled, and turned into a rental after the possessions were divided among my mom, uncles, cousins, brother, and me. Though the structure remained, the home as I knew and loved it had been gone since I was young.
Why, then, did it hurt so much to hear from my mom that the house burned down in 2010?
It sat derelict for months. My mom and dad drove to visit the cemetery on Memorial Day a year later. Mom snapped a photo of the beloved house, her childhood home, and sent it to me.
At first, I couldn’t bear to see the house like that—one glance at the scorched brick and I grieved my grandmother and that space all over again.
Then I forced myself to look, to remember.
I stared at the snapshot for a long time. Weeds grew tall and gangly and the grass was high and uncut. But next to the porch where the loom once sat,
8 min
May 30, 2017 Ep 103: The Trouble with Memoir Is a Wiggly Mind
Memoir depends upon memories, yet memory is a living thing—a slippery, unreliable thing.

In her book The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr describes memory as "a pinball in a machine—it messily ricochets around between image, idea, fragments of scenes, stories you’ve heard. Then the machine goes tilt and snaps off" (Karr 1).

How can we trust this tilting machine to deliver something whole and wholly reliable? If we want to incorporate even short memories into our work to serve as illustrations, Karr says, “even the best minds warp and blur what they see…For all of memory’s power to yank us back into an overwhelming past, it can also fail big time” (5). She sends copies of her manuscripts to people who appear in her books because she doesn’t trust her “wiggly mind” (5).

This week is my grandmother's birthday. If she were alive, we'd be celebrating her 121st birthday. And when her birthday comes around, even though she’s been gone for decades, I still remember the coo of mourning doves in her small Midwestern town, and the sensation of walking on cool linoleum in her kitchen, and the taste of soft sugar cookies with gumdrops pressed in the center.

My parents would drop me off to spend a week with her in the summertime, and I loved sleeping in the front bedroom under fresh sheets spread taut and tidy over the big double bed with its high and regal ornate wood-carved headboard—part of a set she’d inherited from a cousin. Grandma would fold a loosely woven “summer weight” blanket over the sheets, and for a long time I felt like the best of summer was somehow linked to that pastel blanket.

In the narrow, horizontal window of that bedroom, she displayed a collection of colored glass bottles. Light streamed through the blues, yellows, pinks, purples, and greens—morning magic. I blinked myself awake, rested and safe.

In my memory I can still walk through every room, from the baker's cabinet in the corner of the kitchen to the daybed along the dining room wall; from the collection of gardening books on shelves in the living room, to the glass jar of leftover yarn balls sitting next to a chair in Grandma's bedroom.

I wander out the screen door and hear the squeaky stretch of the spring that pulls the wooden frame shut behind me with a solid "thunk." Under the grape arbor, I pluck a Concord grape, manipulating the skin off with my teeth to suck the sweet, cool insides and chew the sour skin for a few seconds before spitting it out.

In my mind, baby's breath still blooms white behind the garage and orange daylilies line the side of the house. My grandma made rag rugs on a loom set up on a small porch. I can see its threads and recall how she’d slide the shuttle across the strings and pull the long wooden beater forward to bind the strips of cloth snug and firm, her feet pressing pedals as the strings shifted to weave.

When Grandma passed away in 1987, the house was sold, remodeled, and turned into a rental after the possessions were divided among my mom, uncles, cousins, brother, and me. Though the structure remained, the home as I knew and loved it had been gone since I was young.

Why, then, did it hurt so much to hear from my mom that the house burned down in 2010?

It sat derelict for months. My mom and dad drove to visit the cemetery on Memorial Day a year later. Mom snapped a photo of the beloved house, her childhood home, and sent it to me.

At first, I couldn’t bear to see the house like that—one glance at the scorched brick and I grieved my grandmother and that space all over again.

Then I forced myself to look, to remember.

I stared at the snapshot for a long time. Weeds grew tall and gangly and the grass was high and uncut. But next to the porch where the loom once sat,
8 min
May 23, 2017 Ep 102: Grow as a Writer – Surround Yourself with Excellence
I heard Seth Godin interviewed on a podcast. He said:
The fact that the market is noisy is not the same as the fact that your work is mediocre. Mediocre work is mediocre work! And we have a choice instead to dig super deep and bring stuff to the table that is worth talking about. And it’s not easy and it won’t happen right away.
It’s hard to take time to dig deep and bring to the table writing that’s worth talking about. Excellence doesn’t usually spill out of an untrained, undisciplined, inexperienced artist, so we have to find ways to grow as a writer.

One way is to surround ourselves with excellence.
Surround Yourself with Excellence
I used to regularly crank up "Bring on the Night," a live album for which Sting pulled together several top jazz musicians, including Branford Marsalis on sax.

Part of Sting's genius for that concert and much of his career has been to surround himself with excellence. For various projects over the years, he's brought together gifted artists to join him, and they performed at a level of complexity and energy he might never have achieved on his own.

Sting has the means to do this, presumably leveraging fame, friendship, and money to convince people to accompany him on a recording project or concert tour.

I don't have those same means at my disposal to convince the top names in writing and publishing to join me on a project, yet I see how the principle of surrounding oneself with excellence is key to advancing in just about anything. And I’m determined to make choices to advance my writing in hopes of avoiding mediocrity.
Look for the Masters
I look for where I see mastery modeled so I can stop settling for my current best and push for more. From masters, I seek to learn new techniques, methods, and skills in hopes of one day achieving the same level of excellence.

How can a writer with limited means surround herself with excellence?

We’re in an incredible time in history. We have access to libraries with just about every book we could ever want. We can read classics online for free. With the click of a button, online, we can meet or at least greet gifted writers who live across the country or on the other side of the world. We can read interviews and essays and poetry.

The possibilities of engaging with excellence are all around us, but so is the temptation to interact with mediocrity. So we need to go look for excellence. Track it down. Expose ourselves to it.

Here are some ways to go about that.
1. Read the best
Don't waste time on fluff. Fill the library of your mind with the best work available. Turn to the most respected authors of both current and classic literature. Immerse yourself in quality composition. Study writing styles, taking note of a turn of phrase that captures your imagination, a passage that stands out, or dialogue that flows fluidly.

These authors can be your mentors, because they share your love of the English language and demonstrate how to use it well.
2. Listen to the best
I've participated in some lighthearted dinner-table debates about audiobooks. If you listen to a recorded book, can you say that you've "read" it? I say, technically, no. The person who lent his voice to the project read the book, while you listened to him read it. It's a different verb, a different action. To read, by definition—at least in my personal dictionary—involves using the eyes. Listening is a different skill.

At the same time, I promote listening to books as a means to invite the rhythm and language of great writing into our minds by a different sense.

When we hear dialogue and descriptive passages, they sink into our brains differently than merely reading the words with our eyeballs. I'm primarily a reader in the technical sense of the word,
8 min
May 23, 2017 Ep 102: Grow as a Writer - Surround Yourself with Excellence
I heard Seth Godin interviewed on a podcast. He said: The fact that the market is noisy is not the same as the fact that your work is mediocre. Mediocre work is mediocre work! And we have a choice instead to dig super deep and bring stuff to the table that is worth talking about. […]
8 min
May 16, 2017 Ep 101: Energize Your Writing by Memorizing Poems
My brother memorized the poem "Jabberwocky" when he was a teenager, and I thought that was so cool.
At the time could not think of anything to memorize other than "The Purple Cow," so I decided to copy him. I memorized "Jabberwocky" with its Bandersnatch and the slithy toves and that vorpal blade. I thought I was so cool.
Not long ago I heard Neil Gaiman recite it, and I thought he was so cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDLac7sAFsI
So you see, poetry can be cool. It can be weird and funny and surprising. It can be serious, sad, and sobering.
Poetry, if we let it, can seep into us and change us with its funny, surprising, and serious ways of processing life and ideas.
My friends at Tweetspeak Poetry know this well. They invited people to join them in the challenge (and fun!) of memorizing poetry during the month of April. Sandra Heska King not only committed to memory "The Stolen Child," which was the poem the Tweetspeak community tried to memorize together, but she also continued work on memorizing T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Yes, the whole thing.
Poetry for a Lifetime
I was chatting with my mom about Tweetspeak's challenge and Sandra's big memorization project, and all of sudden she launched into "Corinna's Going a Maying" by Robert Herrick—partly because it was May 1st and partly because she'd slept in and likes the line "Get up, sweet-Slug-a-bed, and see." Who doesn't want to be a sweet-Slug-a-bed?
Then she continued with "Who is Sylvia? what is she?" from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. Shortly after that, "The Sugarplum Tree" by Eugene Field and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, "Although everyone knows that," she said as if it were no big deal to recite it from beginning to end with barely a pause.
She memorized them all in college in the 1950s, and recited them for fun to my brother and me when we were kids, and revisited them randomly over the past few decades. In other words, she didn't need a daily review to keep them locked inside. She memorized while she was young and carried them with her for a lifetime.
It's in there. The rhythm, the rhyme, the vocabulary, the meaning.
Mom's retention demonstrates the power of memorizing in our youth, whereas Sandra Heska King shows us we can take the challenge at any stage of life, even as an empty nester.
What Poem Might You Take to Heart?
Think about a poem you'd like to memorize. You might be surprised how the words and phrases sink into your mind and influence your work in unexpected, delightful ways.
In poetry, you'll find freedom from some of the mechanics expected in prose, such as proper comma placement. In poetry, you'll find fresh phrasings that throw your brain off its expected track and into novel ways of thinking and imagining. This can happen when you read a poem, but it works best when you take it to heart.
When my kids were young, we read a fair amount of poetry aloud and memorized a few, mostly cute children's poems ("Mice" was a favorite). I worked on two Frost poems at the time, and I can still pull off "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" with only a couple of prompts...although I guess that's not such a big deal, according to my mom.
A high school student memorized "The Raven" in the writing class I taught a couple of years ago and won a speech competition with a creative interpretation of it. One of my daughters memorized "Over the Misty Mountains Cold" from The Hobbit and has entertained her college friends by reciting it beginning to end.
Why don't we all memorize more poetry?
Fill Up on Poetry
An article entitled "A Year of Living Poetically" includes an excerpt from In Defense of Memorization, by Michael Knox Beran:
7 min
May 16, 2017 Ep 101: Energize Your Writing by Memorizing Poems
My brother memorized the poem "Jabberwocky" when he was a teenager, and I thought that was so cool.

At the time could not think of anything to memorize other than "The Purple Cow," so I decided to copy him. I memorized "Jabberwocky" with its Bandersnatch and the slithy toves and that vorpal blade. I thought I was so cool.

Not long ago I heard Neil Gaiman recite it, and I thought he was so cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDLac7sAFsI

So you see, poetry can be cool. It can be weird and funny and surprising. It can be serious, sad, and sobering.

Poetry, if we let it, can seep into us and change us with its funny, surprising, and serious ways of processing life and ideas.

My friends at Tweetspeak Poetry know this well. They invited people to join them in the challenge (and fun!) of memorizing poetry during the month of April. Sandra Heska King not only committed to memory "The Stolen Child," which was the poem the Tweetspeak community tried to memorize together, but she also continued work on memorizing T. S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Yes, the whole thing.
Poetry for a Lifetime
I was chatting with my mom about Tweetspeak's challenge and Sandra's big memorization project, and all of sudden she launched into "Corinna's Going a Maying" by Robert Herrick—partly because it was May 1st and partly because she'd slept in and likes the line "Get up, sweet-Slug-a-bed, and see." Who doesn't want to be a sweet-Slug-a-bed?

Then she continued with "Who is Sylvia? what is she?" from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. Shortly after that, "The Sugarplum Tree" by Eugene Field and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost, "Although everyone knows that," she said as if it were no big deal to recite it from beginning to end with barely a pause.

She memorized them all in college in the 1950s, and recited them for fun to my brother and me when we were kids, and revisited them randomly over the past few decades. In other words, she didn't need a daily review to keep them locked inside. She memorized while she was young and carried them with her for a lifetime.

It's in there. The rhythm, the rhyme, the vocabulary, the meaning.

Mom's retention demonstrates the power of memorizing in our youth, whereas Sandra Heska King shows us we can take the challenge at any stage of life, even as an empty nester.
What Poem Might You Take to Heart?
Think about a poem you'd like to memorize. You might be surprised how the words and phrases sink into your mind and influence your work in unexpected, delightful ways.

In poetry, you'll find freedom from some of the mechanics expected in prose, such as proper comma placement. In poetry, you'll find fresh phrasings that throw your brain off its expected track and into novel ways of thinking and imagining. This can happen when you read a poem, but it works best when you take it to heart.

When my kids were young, we read a fair amount of poetry aloud and memorized a few, mostly cute children's poems ("Mice" was a favorite). I worked on two Frost poems at the time, and I can still pull off "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" with only a couple of prompts...although I guess that's not such a big deal, according to my mom.

A high school student memorized "The Raven" in the writing class I taught a couple of years ago and won a speech competition with a creative interpretation of it. One of my daughters memorized "Over the Misty Mountains Cold" from The Hobbit and has entertained her college friends by reciting it beginning to end.

Why don't we all memorize more poetry?
Fill Up on Poetry
An article entitled "A Year of Living Poetically" includes an excerpt from In Defense of Memorization, by Michael Knox Beran:
7 min
May 09, 2017 Ep 100: Submissions – How to Bounce Back After an Editor Turns You Down
In the last episode, I urged you to send out your work even though it means you’re risking rejection—because to get a yes, you must risk a no.

I even offered a case for embracing rejection as your goal, especially in the realm of literary journals, because by setting a rejection goal, you’re increasing your odds of an acceptance.
A Plan to Process Rejection
But you might need a plan for how to process those rejections.

You can laugh it off as part of your master goal, but it'll still sting. And it hits hardest when your writing expresses deep struggles or raw pain. Writing like that requires great emotional risk, so to be brave enough to send it off should be applauded. To risk all of that and hear “No, we don’t want this” can leave a writer shaken, even shaky.

We are not impervious to the pain of a rejection, nor should we be. We will open that email and feel the wave of nausea. As Isaac Asimov said, “Rejections slips…are lacerations to the soul."

You have every reason to react in whatever honest, human way you need to. My hope is you’ll find a way to feel without ending up paralyzed—you’ll figure out how to bounce back after an editor turns you down. To carry on and continue the work of a writer, you will at some point need to step back into some kind of system or plan to move forward again.
You Need a Rejection Ritual
I recommend a Rejection Ritual to process the emotions.

Some writers have found that their response to rejection loosely parallels the stages of grief. This may be a bit over-the-top, but no doubt you’ll struggle. You may even grieve. Don’t be surprised at how hard it hits.

You may feel sick to your stomach. You might cry. You may need to throw a tantrum or stare into space.

Just don't get stuck there.

Design a ritual that makes sense to you, that recognizes the disappointment and pain while encouraging closure. When you complete the ritual, I hope it leads you back to a creative, productive place. Yours can be a five-minute ritual or an all-day ritual. Make sure it's relatively healthy and relatively brief; I don't recommend going out and getting stoned, for example, nor do I advise dragging it out beyond a full work day.
11 Simple Rejection Rituals
Consider if one of these simple rejection rituals could fit your personality.

Get yourself a nice treat for every rejection.
Kim Liao says she saved all her rejection slips in a box and propped a handwritten note from an editor on her window frame as "a talisman of encouragement."
Write an angry poem to work through your feelings. It doesn't have to be about writing rejection—it could be about other types of rejection. It can even be metaphorical. If you're feeling more depressed than angry, make it a sad poem. The goal is to get your feelings out.
Write an angry poem in someone else’s voice. Choose the voice of an adolescent or young child overreacting to a rejection to tap into thoughts and images you might not find on your own.
Print out the rejection emails and impale them onto a spike. Or burn them in a metal bucket in the back yard.
Take out your frustration on an inanimate object. Do something safe but a little violent, like hammering a nail into a board for every rejection—that allows you to pound something in frustration without hurting anyone, including yourself.
You could hammer those nails and add something beautiful. You could tie or weave ribbons around the nails to remind you that acceptances happen in the midst of rejections.
A client went to a craft store and bought a round fish bowl and plastic beads that look like pearls and diamonds. She drops into the bowl a shimmering bead for each rejection so she can see something beautiful is growing throughout the process.
8 min
May 09, 2017 Ep 100: Submissions - How to Bounce Back After an Editor Turns You Down
In the last episode, I urged you to send out your work even though it means you’re risking rejection—because to get a yes, you must risk a no.
I even offered a case for embracing rejection as your goal, especially in the realm of literary journals, because by setting a rejection goal, you’re increasing your odds of an acceptance.
A Plan to Process Rejection
But you might need a plan for how to process those rejections.
You can laugh it off as part of your master goal, but it'll still sting. And it hits hardest when your writing expresses deep struggles or raw pain. Writing like that requires great emotional risk, so to be brave enough to send it off should be applauded. To risk all of that and hear “No, we don’t want this” can leave a writer shaken, even shaky.
We are not impervious to the pain of a rejection, nor should we be. We will open that email and feel the wave of nausea. As Isaac Asimov said, “Rejections slips…are lacerations to the soul."
You have every reason to react in whatever honest, human way you need to. My hope is you’ll find a way to feel without ending up paralyzed—you’ll figure out how to bounce back after an editor turns you down. To carry on and continue the work of a writer, you will at some point need to step back into some kind of system or plan to move forward again.
You Need a Rejection Ritual
I recommend a Rejection Ritual to process the emotions.
Some writers have found that their response to rejection loosely parallels the stages of grief. This may be a bit over-the-top, but no doubt you’ll struggle. You may even grieve. Don’t be surprised at how hard it hits.
You may feel sick to your stomach. You might cry. You may need to throw a tantrum or stare into space.
Just don't get stuck there.
Design a ritual that makes sense to you, that recognizes the disappointment and pain while encouraging closure. When you complete the ritual, I hope it leads you back to a creative, productive place. Yours can be a five-minute ritual or an all-day ritual. Make sure it's relatively healthy and relatively brief; I don't recommend going out and getting stoned, for example, nor do I advise dragging it out beyond a full work day.
11 Simple Rejection Rituals
Consider if one of these simple rejection rituals could fit your personality.
Get yourself a nice treat for every rejection.
Kim Liao says she saved all her rejection slips in a box and propped a handwritten note from an editor on her window frame as "a talisman of encouragement."
Write an angry poem to work through your feelings. It doesn't have to be about writing rejection—it could be about other types of rejection. It can even be metaphorical. If you're feeling more depressed than angry, make it a sad poem. The goal is to get your feelings out.
Write an angry poem in someone else’s voice. Choose the voice of an adolescent or young child overreacting to a rejection to tap into thoughts and images you might not find on your own.
Print out the rejection emails and impale them onto a spike. Or burn them in a metal bucket in the back yard.
Take out your frustration on an inanimate object. Do something safe but a little violent, like hammering a nail into a board for every rejection—that allows you to pound something in frustration without hurting anyone, including yourself.
You could hammer those nails and add something beautiful. You could tie or weave ribbons around the nails to remind you that acceptances happen in the midst of rejections.
A client went to a craft store and bought a round fish bowl and plastic beads that look like pearls and diamonds. She drops into the bowl a shimmering bead for each rejection so she can see something beautiful is growing throughout the process.
8 min
May 02, 2017 Ep 99: Submissions – To Get a Yes, You Risk a No
You’ve written something, edited it, polished it, and decided to send it out. Depending on your project, you’ll be shipping it off to a literary journal, magazine, agent, or publishing house. When you do, you risk rejection.

You’ve probably heard about Stephen King’s rejections from his book On Writing. He says, “By the time I was fourteen...the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it” (29).
You Must Risk a No to Get a Yes
Rejection is part of the process of writing and submitting our work.

Nicole Rollender says she’s gotten to know several poets through social media, and when she congratulated one of these writers on her full-length acceptance, the poet told Rollender "it had taken her five years and 80 rejections to get her acceptance.” Most people aren’t posting about their rejections, Rollender observes, so this story can remind us that "behind every acceptance are a lot of rejections."
Lacerations of the Soul
But I won’t lie to you—rejections hurt. I’ve heard “No,” and it stings. Rejections mess with your mind. They awaken the voices that taunt us, questioning our right to write.

When you get that first response back, and it’s a rejection…you’ll have to fight the temptation to draw an extreme conclusion. Some new writers and sensitive writers feel that sting and think, “Why did I ever think I could write?”

Isaac Asimov expresses the pain a rejection delivers this way: “Rejections slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil – but there is no way around them.”

Sylvia Plath offers an alternative view. She wrote, “I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.”
Try
If you want to get published, try. And keep trying. Keep writing and sending out your work. And when you get a rejection slip, tell yourself this:

“One editor at one publication doesn’t want this one piece on this one day.”

That’s all it means.

Believe that. Then you can walk through a rejection ritual, which we’ll talk about in more detail next time.

After that, the next step will be a little different depending on whether you're working on a book proposal, a magazine article pitch, or an essay for literary journals. If you’re an essayist, you could revisit your piece and see if it needs revising—maybe have someone else take a look at it, too. Make any changes you deem necessary, then send it out to the next journal on your list.
Don’t Let Rejections Take You by Surprise
When you know in advance that you will receive rejections, you can deal with them a least a little more rationally. Knowledge of the inevitable won’t make the rejections any easier, but at least they won’t take you by surprise.

The only way to avoid rejection completely is to stuff your work in a drawer or let it languish in a digital file, and never, ever send it out.

Or you could get in the game. You could start sending out your work and learn and grow. You’ll get more experienced writing cover letters and researching literary journals or magazines.

Rollender pointed out that “[i]f a journal receives 1,500 submissions of five poems a year, and they have 80 poem slots in their four annual issues, that’s 80 out of 7,500 poems. So a rejection” she says, "isn’t a referendum on your work.” Again, it simply means that one editor at one publication doesn’t want this one piece on this one day.
Increase Your Rate of Submission
An article in the September 2016 issue of The Writer magazine presented stats on the rate of acceptance based on number of submissions to literary journals. Author Keysha Whitaker tracked her submissions and at the time she started calculating, she was getting submissions at a rate of 10 percent.
8 min
May 02, 2017 Ep 99: Submissions - To Get a Yes, You Risk a No
You’ve written something, edited it, polished it, and decided to send it out. Depending on your project, you’ll be shipping it off to a literary journal, magazine, agent, or publishing house. When you do, you risk rejection. You’ve probably heard about Stephen King’s rejections from his book On Writing. He says, “By the time I […]
8 min

About Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach

From the publisher's feed

With Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach, you'll gain clarity and overcome hurdles to become a better writer, pursue publishing, and reach your writing goals. Ann provides practical tips and motivation for…