I’ve submitted my essay, “Becoming enough,” to 41 journals and have received 31 rejections (or “we decline to publish” notices) so far. When do I concede defeat? After 35 rejections, I finally gave up on “a rip in the fabric.” It’s since found a home as part of Blank Pages on the Brevity Blog. Perhaps that’s the best course of action for this essay–fold it into something else, something longer. I certainly have plenty of material on being or not being enough. Why not find all of it and mash into some kind of essay?

But sometimes it just takes awhile. In 2014, Debra Monroe told us that the average was 25 submissions: submit to 25 journals and 1 will accept it. Is that still the average? Maybe 31 is the new average, and I simply need to wait. And wait. And wait some more. I could wait until I hit the 2-year mark for the first submission…something I may do with my chapbook, “Unraveling,” which now has 17 rejections. November 11, 2022, marks the first round of submissions. I’ve now spent $292 on contest and submission fees. That’s a lot. Two journals have had the chapbook since 11/11/22. The other four are more recent (2024). Fjords Review declined to publish but mentioned that it had reached the final round. And 8th & Atlas declined but published a portion of it online (see Normal). So I guess the process hasn’t been a total bust. I just need to be patient.

My question remains: how many rejections is too many? Fifty sounds like a sufficient maximum. Beyond that, the quest to publish seems futile. If anyone is out there reading this blog, what do you think? How many is too many?