I'm fortunate to have had several works from different genres find a home in reputable literary journals and anthologies; however, getting my writing published is no small feat. As the accompanying image indicates, I received notice last month that my personal essay earned a spot in the July 2025 issue of The Sun, a highly respected ad-free literary magazine that's been around for decades. While statistics vary, my research shows fewer than 0.4% of submissions make it past The Sun's rigorous vetting and editing stages.
With all the rejections I receive, seeing a work get published is cause to celebrate. Given that this is my second piece placed with The Sun, I've learned to accept that I'm a pretty decent writer, though it's not unusual for me to frantically polish a submission to meet a pending deadline, only to end up tweaking it when I come across another suitable submission venue. This additional round of tweaking sometimes causes me to cringe at having submitted the prior version.
This revision business is never-ending. Even when I think I've written a fantastic piece, the passage of time provides me with eyes fresh enough to find yet more to tweak. Poems are surprisingly onerous to revise, as every word and line must be as concise and impactful as possible. Determining the correct tense of an individual verb pesters me to no end—a struggle that might endure throughout several revisions given that, with each pass, the poem's rhythm changes in my head.
I do care about the quality of my work; and yet, I've learned from the rejection pile that one's best effort usually doesn't make the cut. A lot depends on the editor and what they like to read and/or write. It also depends on the theme editors are looking for—a criterion not always evident.
With one of my recent poem submissions, I faced an unsettling conundrum. The theme and writing style were left up to the writer. Despite familiarizing myself with the publication, the rejection letter stated that while my writing was appreciated, either its theme or style was not what the editors were looking for with their next issue. If only I'd had a better understanding of what they wanted!
I've likened the process of getting published to a crapshoot, which also means I've had work accepted for publication that I didn't think would see the light of day. Being in the right place at the right time is an elusive force that figures prominently in getting published. It can allude to an editor's mood or the current political climate or the workload piled on an editor's desk. Unfortunately, it's not always clear what some of those more cryptic guidelines are alluding to when the editors say they're open to all styles/genres/subjects, etc. The confusion is magnified when the feedback in a rejection letter says, "your piece is not quite what we're looking for."
In the end, numerous factors—some controllable, others not so much—go into seeing your work published. When I hit the jackpot, I need to accept a win as genuine and celebrate the effort that went into it. So, I plan to mark this latest achievement with a dinner out to reinforce that I can conquer in this game of chance. Lord knows, if I don't acknowledge my milestone achievements with a little bit of fanfare, no one else is going to do so on my behalf.
And as I've been wont to do, I'm going to dismiss any reluctance about patting myself on the back (I'll save this little issue of mine for another post). Instead, I will repurpose this celebration as an incentive to keep at it.
Here's to raising a glass—bon appetit!