Submission Success Story — “The Sunset,” an essay on death and dying for LongreadsY’all. I’m about to tell you a saga. Of broken rules and repeated submissions, of almost acceptances and withdrawn acceptances and acceptances again! The story starts in November 2020 when I finish this piece up and confirm that it makes writers I admire cry. Excellent. I aim high in my first pitch—Longreads. I receive zero response. Darn. I pitch/submit it to 6 more places then and receive all form rejections, one higher-tier form reject. Shucks. I send it to 10 more places and receive form/higher-tier form rejects. Dang it. I pull it and send it to my crit group. They read, agree that it’s still beautiful, sob-worthy, pretty well perfect if not a little depressing (it is death, dying, and the elderly), and we shrug our shoulders and send it out again. I send it to 17 more places (we’re at Summer 2021 now) and receive mostly form or higher-tier rejects. I receive one personal rejection from Pipe Wrench Magazine, the new cool kid on the block, who thought it would be perfect for Longreads and said I should send it their way (and they would also email the editor to be on the lookout.) I send to Longreads again. No response. I send it to Catapult. They want it! Well, one editor wants me to edit it first, then they’ll see if the rest of the team wants it. We do two rounds of edits. They send to the team. No dice. We shake hands and go our separate ways. An editor at n+1 tweets that they are looking for similar stories; I send to them. They’re interested! They pass it on to the editorial team. No response. I send it to 7 more places. In February 2022, success! A publication wants it. They love it, want to pay money for it, have a few ideas for edits to cut it down by a quarter (cue my broken heart), but after all the rejections, I’ll take it. They send the contract. I ask my agent to look over the contract. Agent wants changes. The editors say, “No problem! Updating contract and sending over shortly.” That is the last I hear from them. After a couple months of ghosting, I email them to withdraw the piece from acceptance and put it out on the market again. Le sigh. June 2022, I send the piece out to 3 more places. Meanwhile, I’ve actually been writing for Longreads. At the start of the year, I pitched and got some ideas for Reading Lists accepted with them and had built a working relationship with two of their new editors, one of which was Peter Rubin. (Sari Botton made her exit after my first submission). I ask Peter if he’d like to read it. He says yes, and then says he loves it and wants to publish it. Third time is the goddamn charm. And you know what? I got paid more at Longreads, I got a better edit at Longreads, and I got better reach at Longreads than I ever would have gotten with the other publication. There are many lessons to learn here: Yes, do your editing. But if you know your piece is good, sometimes you just need to stick it out and know that its time will come. Don’t cave. Editors will want to edit, but some edits will cut the soul from the piece. Do. Not. Cave. It ain’t over until it’s over. I do not recommend to others re-submitting a piece over and over again in hopes the answer will change. But, I do recommend reading the professional room. The first time I submitted and got no response was around the time that Longreads was experiencing a leadership change. It’s possible that my submission fell through the cracks. I only submitted the second time when another editor at another publication encouraged me to (and said they would nudge the editors.) I only submitted it a third time after I had well-established a working relationship with an editor there. I pitched and published three Reading List pieces for LR before I took a chance and pitched the third time.
I love this piece. It is so near and dear to my heart and I am so glad I stuck it out until it could land with the best home possible. Here are the stats: Days on submission (the first time): 459 days
Days on submission (the second time): 52 days
# of form rejections: 26
# of higher-tier form rejects: 8
# of personal rejections: 2
# of revise and resubmit: 1
# of acceptances: 2
# of Thank You letters I received from readers who loved the piece enough to want to reach out to me and tell me: 16 Pay: $500 Ps. I’m looking for Submission Success Stories! If you have a story you’d like to share for the newsletter, please email me at lisa@allthinsgwords.com with a link to the piece in question.
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