Breadcrumbs

I took a class. And started writing (again). And got an email that I would fail… many times. But the email also reminded me that I could fail up. And if I was lucky, I could fail like some of my most beloved authors.

Back in the day, I kept a Peanuts cartoon stuck to my Mac LC (yep, that old) until it yellowed. Then I laminated it. Snoopy, the bon vivant beagle writing the great “It was a dark and stormy night” novel, typed “Dear Editor, you keep sending back my stories. What is it with you?” 

Exactly!

Here at Eleventh Hour Literary, we think those editors are on to something. The editor knows a gem when it crosses their desk — not through what they accept — but rather, initially, through what they reject.

Every writer can wax poetic about an author that they admire (or at least have heard of) who after multiple rejections finally got their novel published. Your own bookshelf makes the case that persistence is not merely a virtue, it may be a modern requirement. Herman Melville was famously asked “Does it have to be a whale?” by Bentley & Sons Publishing House in 1851 in a rejection letter that is a marvelous read (I promise. Google it.) Dracula, Frankenstein, Harry Potter, War and Peace, the Hitchhikers Guide, Dante’s Inferno and more, wear the same badge of honor (or hope) in their tenacity toward publication. In fact, let it be Chicken Soup for the Soul (144 rejections before it became a best-seller, series and franchise) to you that a rejection is permission to revisit your work and make it better. (Note that although the myth remains, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind was not rejected per a June 22, 1936 letter from the author, so we offer it is possible to succeed in the big world without any fancy rejection badge.) 

Rejection, we at Eleventh Hour Literary posit, allows the writer time to sit with, workshop on, mess-up, dress-up and fess-up to the gaps, flaws and opportunities in their writing, and to remain actively involved with the submission. It can feel petulant and downright cold (the form letter rejection is a personal anathema) but there is power in outside perspective. These works are not baby birds pushed from the nest before the writer turns to the next inspiration — we believe the writer is peering over the edge of the nest actively willing that fledgling to fly. And if it doesn’t fly the first, second or eleventh time it leaves the nest, the writer is picking the offspring back up with care, smoothing ruffled feathers and polishing burrs toward beauty. Art is more beautiful with each revision because creative juices — whether positive or negative — are energized by a bit of distance and external input.

We believe there is power in rejection and strength in revision. And we know that there is a gem in your portfolio that we would like to read. The Submission Guidelines provide the breadcrumbs — we are looking for those high-quality, polished through love, short stories, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays and art — and cannot wait to hear from you.

And special thanks to the Professional Staff Senate (PSS) at Binghamton University for launching this new literary magazine (they did not say no 11 times).

– Michelle L. Gardner, Eleventh Hour Literary