I recently read an essay in Issue 3 of Kugelmass by Pank editor  (and excellent writer in her own right) Roxane Gay. The essay is called “The Art of the Rejection of Rejection,” and as the title suggests, it’s about Gay’s experiences as an editor receiving angry, bitter responses from writers whose work she rejects.

One of the most interesting responses she shares in the essay came from a fellow editor, with whom it was clear she had established some sort of working relationship prior to rejecting his work. More than anything, it seemed this fellow editor was upset about receiving a form rejection, but one comment he made in his lengthy missive was one I’ve heard many writers make about work that has been rejected, the gist of which is that many of his stories rejected by Pank have gone on to get accepted elsewhere.

If I were Gay, my reaction would be, “And your point is?” Clearly this editor—and many writers who have made similar complaints—believes that because a story is accepted somewhere, it must deserve to get accepted anywhere, and any journal that rejected it was wrong to do so. This argument is so illogical, it’s almost not even worth picking apart, but just for fun, let’s have a go at it anyway.

First of all, a confession: I’ve felt this way before, too. It never would have crossed my mind to email an editor who had rejected me to complain, but I do understand that initial in-your-face-sucka! feeling you get when something somebody said wasn’t good enough gets accepted. One of the first rejections I ever received came from a journal whose policy it was to give personal feedback on every submission. There’s a lot to be said for form rejections, let me tell you. This rejection essentially said the story was uninteresting, the character idiotic, and the writing weak and awkward. Ouch! When the same draft of the story got accepted elsewhere a few weeks later, I felt, I admit, kind of gloaty toward the journal whose editor had said such nasty things about it.

But I was wrong to feel that way, and here’s why: writing is subjective. Yes, some editors seem to forget that when they say things like, “Most of the work that gets submitted is terrible,” but on some level, I think most editors know that just because they don’t engage with something doesn’t mean it’s inherently bad. A rejection doesn’t mean the editor is rejecting you or your ability as a writer. It doesn’t even, really, mean they think what you submitted is bad. All it means is they, personally, don’t like this particular piece quite enough to make room for it in their particular journal.

Each journal usually has its own specific aesthetic, which is often difficult to pin down even after you’ve read multiple issues. Sometimes, as is the case with journals run by grad students, the aesthetic is constantly in flux because the masthead changes from year to year. Sometimes, though, you might think you have a pretty good idea of what this journal publishes, and you might think your story or essay or poem is a good fit, and you might be right—but you might be wrong, too. You can never really be sure if a specific editor is going to like a specific submission, and the fact that an editor from one journal says “no” and an editor from a different journal says “yes” doesn’t say anything about either editor’s ability to recognize a good thing when it’s in front of them. All it means is that the one editor engaged with that particular submission more than the other did.

Snarkily pointing out that a journal has rejected work that was accepted elsewhere—even when the “elsewhere” is, in your opinion, a “better” place to have been accepted—says more about you as the writer and your attitude, ego, and level of bitterness than it does about the journal. Every editor has a right to like or not like whatever he or she wants. You’d think, as an editor, the guy that wrote the letter to Gay would have understood that.

I’ve been working as an Associate Editor for Bound Off for a few months now, and I think it’s time to talk a little bit about what I think you can learn from working on a literary journal.

1.      Reading submissions gives you an idea of an editor’s perspective. I’m given ten submissions to read every two weeks. It’s not an overwhelming number by any means, and since we only publish flash fiction, I DO read every submission all the way through. I know, however, from previous experience working for journals that this isn’t always the case. Many editors and slush pile readers stop reading as soon as they feel they can justify saying no—why waste their time reading the entire thing when they already know they won’t accept it?

But even people like me who do read every story all the way through expect to be sucked in quickly. If your story gets off to a plodding start, or has lots of exposition right away, or is extremely confusing for the first few pages, you’ll be really lucky if an editor sticks with you to the payoff later in the story. And even if the editor does stick with you, that payoff will have to be damn good to justify an uninspired beginning.

2.      Reading failed submissions forces you to think about what makes writing good or bad. When I respond to submissions, I’m supposed to give a brief summary of the story and say a thing or two about what I liked or didn’t like about it. Then I give my yes or no (or sometimes maybe) vote.

Because I have to articulate why I’m saying yes or no, I have to really think about the strengths and weaknesses of each story. I can’t just say, “It wasn’t my kind of story.” Instead, I have to figure out what about this story makes it not good enough in my opinion. It goes the other way too. When I say yes to a story, I have to put into words why I think the story deserves a spot on the podcast, and it’s got to be more convincing than, “I just really liked it.”

3.      Reading submissions helps you put rejection into perspective. I can’t stand it when editors claim that most of the submissions they see are terrible. That’s BS! I’ve found that in any batch of ten submissions, two or three are “terrible,” although I would probably opt to describe them as amateurish instead. It doesn’t mean these writers will never amount to anything, but they’re not there yet. I don’t feel bad saying no to these stories because, aside from the fact that I want our journal to only have good stories so people will actually listen to it, these writers need to learn that their writing is not up to par yet. Rejection is probably the most painful for writers at that stage, who are submitting though they’re not ready to submit, but it’s also an important part of the process of becoming a good writer.

The other seven or eight stories in each batch—which, keep in mind, amounts to seventy to eighty percent of the submissions—could not, in my opinion, be reasonably  described as terrible. These are stories that are clearly NOT written by novices. They’re well written; they often have elegant prose and make good use of craft techniques. But that doesn’t mean they get accepted. We accept only a very low percentage of the stories that get submitted to us, which means we reject the majority of those pretty good stories.

I sometimes agonize over whether to say yes or no to a particular story. Some stories are so good in so many ways, but there will be just one thing bringing it down. It might be too much exposition, or maybe some element of the plot doesn’t feel original enough. Whatever it is, I have to find reasons to whittle that remaining seven or eight stories down to maybe one “yes” vote. From there, the stories will be read by other editors, who will add their own votes without knowing mine, just as I didn’t know what those who had read the stories before me thought.

Since I’ve been volunteering for Bound Off, it’s happened exactly three times that I read a story that I instantly and uncontrollably fell in love with. Two of those stories ended up getting accepted—and pretty quickly, too. To my knowledge, so far none of the other “yes” votes I’ve offered have ended in an acceptance.

So you see, everything has to come together just right for an actual acceptance to happen. Rejections, then, shouldn’t devastate anyone too much, but do bring your work back to the drawing board if you get a lot of form rejections for it. Many of the stories I’ve said “no” to might have earned a “yes” had they just been revised in XYZ way. A rejection doesn’t mean your story has no potential, but sometimes it does mean your story needs a little more work.

This week, Damien received several boxes at work, packed with the newest issue of New Ohio Review. It’s always exciting when the new issue arrives. He puts so much energy into designing and editing it that it almost feels unreal, I imagine, holding the final product in his hands. He brought a copy home and read aloud to me some of his favorite poems from the issue. I loved them, too, though it’s safe to say that as simply a reader, I don’t have quite the same experience reading the journal as he does, having been in on the issue from its inception, having watched it grow and become what it eventually became.

His enthusiasm, sharing the new issue with me, reminded me of why I decided to volunteer to work as an Associate Editor at Bound Off. Certainly, the amount of work I’ll put in at my position is nowhere near the amount Damien puts in at New Ohio Review (and a good thing, too, since he gets paid for his efforts, while mine is just a volunteer, few hours a week kind of job). Still, I look forward to having that satisfaction again, that feeling of accomplishment every time a new edition goes out (especially when a story I recommended we accept is part of that new edition).

I’m also looking forward to the ways slogging through a journal’s slush pile will improve my own writing. As writers, we sometimes forget that our work must first win over an editor before it can ever make it in front of a reader. Editors read slightly different from readers. While readers go into a piece expecting it to be good (because, after all, the bad stuff has been filtered out through the publication process), editors have no idea what they’re going to get every time they open a new submission—they may be about to read something brilliant, but it’s just as likely that they’re about to read something terrible. The most likely scenario, though, is that the story will be neither brilliant nor terrible, but will exist in that hazy world between. Those are the submissions it’s most difficult to decide on, but decide we must—and quickly! Quickly! We don’t have a lot of time to devote to each submission!

A reader goes in to a piece planning to like it, but an editor must reject 99% of everything he or she reads. This means an editor must read looking for reasons to say no, planning to say no. Knowing that 99 out of 100 submissions you receive will be rejected puts the odds in the “no” pile for every new submission you open. In a reader’s hands, then, each piece is innocent until proven guilty, but to an editor, the burden of proof (that the piece is worthwhile, that the piece deserves a spot on the page, or in Bound Off’s case, in the podcast) lies with the submission.

And it’s useful to remember this as a writer. It’s useful to remember it when you get rejected, because it takes the sting off a bit; it’s useful to remember it when you get accepted, because it hammers home how good you must be that your stuff is making it past the editorial hurdles; and it’s useful to remember it when you’re revising, because if you really want to make it into the hands of some readers, you do need to take the opinions of other smart, with-it, literary types into consideration. You do need other people’s feedback, and you need to seriously consider anything other people might say. The things your beta readers or workshop classmates are getting stuck on might be the same things that cause an editor to slide your submission into the “no” pile.

This doesn’t, of course, mean that every piece of feedback you ever receive should be taken or that you should change your work in a way that you, as the writer, don’t like. But. You should listen, and more than that, you should really seriously evaluate any feedback you receive if publication is one of your goals, and let’s be honest, for most of us, it is.