#0052 This Baby Turns One!

A bird’s-eye view of 100 Rejections Club

I submit: Kitties make rejection better. (Source: Substack shareable images.)

When squinting at the list of weekly posts, certain themes begin to appear: childhood memories (books; Sesame Street), music (🎶We Are Family🎶; 🎶Once in a Lifetime🎶), acronyms.

Enjoy the highlights.

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#0003 My Hunt For Places To Submit; Or, “Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits!” — Elmer Fudd (October 15, 2023)

After slamming Elmer Fudd’s hat on my head, I went a-hunting on Duotrope for 3 places to submit my Weirdo hybrid piece. 

Here’s the Weirdo update: The next month (November) I submitted Weirdo to another place, Weirdo got accepted, I immediately withdrew Weirdo from the original 3 places, and, two months later (January), I received an email notification that the place where Weirdo had found a home had closed. Forever. 

Once I did some sleuthing and emailing to editors at the original 3 places, I resubmitted Weirdo to 2 of the 3 (the third was closed to submissions). That was March. Just this week, six months later? I received a message from 1 of the original places that Weirdo will be under review toward… two issues since I first submitted Weirdo for consideration. Time warps in the world of publishing.

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#0018 Clearly Muddled; Or, How flipping the coin relates to… Taking the sting out of rejection, Part Six (January 26, 2024)

Dear readers, I wrote something like twelve parts on the Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems (SNS/PNS), dovetailing into the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) that monitors for threat and safety cues. Whew! A lot of alphabet soup to get to the Inner Critic.

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#0022 Stop Swinging That Scythe at Yourself: Taking the sting out of rejection, Part Ten (February 25, 2024)

Check out this prompt from the Inner Critic post:

Imagine your Compassionate Self released from your mind and taking on a corporeal form. Describe and/or sketch your Compassionate Self with textural and sensory details, sharing all its glory. 

If you’re into good vs. evil themes, pit your Compassionate Self against your Inner Critic in a race across a cityscape or in a boxing ring. May your Compassionate Self prevail!

Which leads to a post on self-compassion.

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#0029 Create More Strategies: Concrete ways to shift, cultivate, and plan (April 14, 2024)

Here’s a fun acronym from the post!

To begin to change for the better how we react, it’s useful to practice ART:

Acknowledge the Inner Critic
Reframe verbiage as a babbling brook
Treat ourselves as we would a BFF

Try not to be too hard on yourself. It takes A. Lot. Of. Practice. to cultivate the self-compassion needed to combat the Inner Critic. That’s kinda why it’s called practice? To make better (not perfect!) over time.

(Other posts on self-compassion include #0023, #0025, #0028.)

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#0032 Oh, The Places You’ll Go (To Submit): More mechanisms for tracking submissions (May 5, 2024) 

Submission trackers help the publishing world go round.

One of the many perks of Inlandia’s 100 Rejections Club membership is access to the Duotrope group account, which has a thorough submission tracker (#0030). Lots of people have heard of Submittable and know of its adequate tracker (#0031). Yet I also wanted to explore other, smaller operations for tracking simultaneous submissions in this post. (Also handwritten options. With stickers.) 

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#0036 🎶We Are Family🎶 Gather together in creative community (June 2, 2024)

Connect in community. Because

It’s easier to embrace rejection together.

(See also #0037. And #0047. Probably others that I’m forgetting.)

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#0040 Shifting your mindset from wannabe to authentic creative: An introduction; I Think I Can, I Think I Can 🚂🚃🚃🚃 (June 30, 2024)

For a stretch of summer, I actually planned posts (Wait! People actually do that?!) on the concept of embracing our Creative Personhood. From this introductory post:

There might be times people question if you are a Writer or Artist. More often you will have doubts you are actually and truly a Creative Person. This imposter syndrome — a sword wielded by your inner critic — is surmountable. In the coming weeks, I will share how to:

• Challenge your thoughts

• Celebrate vulnerability

• Consider yourself a best friend

• Compose a self-compassionate letter

• Create mindfulness breaks

These techniques will help you nullify imposter syndrome and support your creative endeavors as you strive to accumulate those 100 rejections.

(Go here for links to the other posts.)

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Year 2 of Inlandia’s 100 Rejections Club has begun (with Duotrope accounts confirmed and weekly zoom meetup survey distributed), so I can declare here and now my continued dedication to the 100 Rejections Club newsletter!

Next time: Why we should scrabble to submit before the end of September