Has My Writing Plateaued?

Perspiration is essential for the mammal. Persistence is essential for the creator.

I happen to be both… so I’m constantly sweating and trying over here.

I took a turn from screenwriting to writing prose a little over two and a half years ago. A turn back to it, I should say. And I still do some screenwriting but I’ve been focusing heavily on writing short stories and manuscripts. In that time of over two and a half years I have been submitting to a lot of contests and publications. A lot.

Success won’t come easy or early so I am submitting as often as I can. There’s no guarantee I’d get published just because I submitted X amount of times or because I had been submitting for X amount of months. But the only way to get published is to keep submitting and not let constant rejection get me down.

I had to keep telling myself that quite a lot in the beginning… because I got turned down a lot. A lot.

I keep track of my submissions just to keep everything organized. Because of that I’m able to see just how many times I’ve submitted. In the beginning, it was 67 times, and never a ‘Yes.’ A lot of ‘Unfortunately No’s’ and the like. In that span of 0/67 I did move on to a second round 3 different times. So that was something. But it wasn’t the goal. No one dreams of making it to the second round of three different contests/consideration periods for publications. 0/67 is a tough one to not let bruise your ego. But it’s important to not let it bruise you… because it’s absolutely a possibility… it should probably be expected! And then finally, number 68, I got accepted! To a publication called Sci-Fi Shorts. 1/68 would be the worst field goal percentage for a basketball player and an atrocious completion rate for a quarterback. But for a writer, for me, it didn’t matter. Because it had the 1.

I kept submitting at the same rate and soon, I was 2/80. Another story accepted to Sci-Fi Shorts. And then I was 3/86. A story accepted to Clever Fox Lit! Had I broken the seal? Was I now getting accepted more often after having achieved the elusive “first?”

I kept submitting. Over the next 29 attempts, 2 more stories accepted, to Sci-Fi Shorts. Also, a big contest called the Launch Pad Prose Competition, I moved on to the Top 50. Effectively the Fourth round of a Six Round competition. I was sure I had reached the next level in my writing career. I was 5/115… Tom Brady numbers, right? But in all seriousness, 5 times I was published, and in my last 50 attempts or so. I assumed my writing was improving and I was seeing the fruits of that labor. And my Top 50 placement in that competition scored me a meeting with a production company who wanted to read more of my work!

It was exciting. I expected things to keep rolling at that pace.

But they didn’t.

I kept submitting… and I kept getting rejected. That meeting I had, it felt like it went well. I sent them a few pieces of my work. I waited. I followed up. Didn’t hear back from them. Sure, they could have a lot going on, and you never know what could happen. Or they could have had other meetings with writers who they were more interested in. So, I kept submitting. And I kept getting rejected. 62 more times. One honorable mention. But nothing more. Similar to my 0/67 start. Had I plateaued? Or worse… found the steep hill down on the other side of the mountain?

But I kept telling myself to keep at it. Persistence was key. And perspiration. Believe me, you go 0/62 and you’re perspiring. But I knew there was no rhyme or reason to the numbers. It was truly just sending out the best work I could… and hoping for the best. It was still difficult though, thinking I had leveled up, but then wondering if it all was just a temporary power boost. There we go, my sports metaphors had turned into video game metaphors. In any event, what was the strategy?

Keep playing the game.

And I’m glad I did.

I just received word, another story of mine was accepted! To Mollusk Lit.

6/178.

And my fears of it all just being a temporary power boost melted away… for now, anyway. But seriously, it was a reminder to me, I just have to keep submitting. It’s the only way to get published. And there will be a lot of rejection along the way but that doesn’t matter. That fraction 6/178, the denominator doesn’t matter. Only the numerator… and that it is a positive integer larger than 0. And now my metaphor got quite mathy.

I wanted to share my story… the one getting published… but I also wanted to share my story… the one about my journey here. I’m not the only one who's gone through this. That’s far from the truth. But if you want it, if you want to be published, you’ll have to go through it too. When my story is available on Mollusk Lit I’ll share it, in the meantime, I am just basking in the rays of another acceptance email.

One last tidbit of information that might also help. My first 5 stories to get published, the places that published them were the only places I sent them to. So, those particular stories never got rejected. Only accepted. This most recent one, I had sent it to 3 previous publications that had all turned it down. It was the 4th that accepted it. So, don’t get down on a story getting turned down by a publication… or multiple publications… it could still find a home elsewhere.

Like I said, persistence is key. As is a good sweatband. Because perspiration is inevitable.