Daphne Kalotay blogs about all those nasty little short story rejections she collected on the way to publishing books, on Meg Waite Clayton's 1st Books

Daphne Kalotay's first novel, Russian Winter, sold at auction, is being published in eighteen countries, and, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, "could well be the debut novel of the year." The Washington Post calls it "a magnificent tale of love, loss, betrayal, and redemption," and concludes "the author lets the truth ebb and flow until a final riptide of revelations leave the reader profoundly moved." An overnight success? Daphne's story of submission and rejection - and fortitude - is inspiring! - Meg

In the months that I was making final edits on my debut novel, Russian Winter, the to-do pile on my desk grew so large and neglected, I finally attempted an all-out cleaning—drawers, files, everything. That’s how I found the spiral notebook. Small, with a thick cover of dark green fabric. Only when I opened it did I recognize what it was: the log I’d kept of my story submissions, which ones I’d sent to which journals, on what date, and when I’d heard back from the editors. How could I have forgotten it?

At the top of each page is a title and word count, entries beginning in 1996 and ending in 2004, twenty-five stories in all. Of those twenty-five, nine were published in magazines. A few more saw the light of day as part of my first book, Calamity and Other Stories. Those statistics probably don’t sound so encouraging. And seeing the long lists of submission after submission, with the inevitable R, for rejection, at the end of each line, I’m astonished at my fortitude. Did I really send those stories out over and over—snail mail, SASE enclosed—when they just kept coming back to me, in 9x12 envelopes so battered, I never could re-send the same manuscript, and had to print each one out yet again? I eventually quit the big manila envelopes and switched to letter-size SASEs—and then, as I grew more jaded, smaller, check-size ones, since rejections were rarely printed on more than a scrap of photocopy paper, as if rejected work did not deserve a full sheet of stationary.

A randomly selected page tells the saga of so many of my stories: twenty-three submissions before I admitted to myself that that particular story was no good. A huge X is drawn through it. Today I couldn’t tell you what that story was about.

It’s worth noting that in the case of another story, “Serenade”—a strong one that became the opener in my collection—a single page wasn’t enough to contain all the rejections: twenty-eight before Missouri Review accepted it. (That news is noted by a simple red check mark, surprisingly subdued when I recall how elated I was.)

While periodicals like Missouri Review seemed to hold the key to my writing future, my notebook reveals the struggles of those journals—and even glossy magazines—themselves. Like phantoms names of publications no longer in existence appear: Story, Partisan Review, Book, DoubleTake, Ontario Review, Mademoiselle, Jane. (Remember when all women’s magazines published short stories?) There is also an acceptance note from a quarterly that folded before my story could appear. That story never did end up getting published.

Yes, the hastily jotted letter R shows up pretty constantly, sometimes adorned by qualifiers that look slightly pathetic now: flattering R, excellent R, regretful R, very positive R. And there are hopeful notes to myself:

asked to see more!

nice note asking to see more

nice note, showed it had been read

long kind note asking for more

More than once, I see an angry No sign of having been read!

But there is also that first triumphant declaration—in thick blue pen, all caps—TO BE PUBLISHED SUMMER ’99.

“Asked for revision” appears a few times—and then, following resubmission, the inevitable R. Yet I’m moved to see how diligently I copied out exact quotes from rejection letters, as if their very phrasing held the key to publication: “very nice story,” “came close with us,” “anything else?” Penned into the margins are crumbs tossed by editors, everything from the generic “not right for us” and “feels more like a chapter than a story” to “less focused” and “ends weakly.”

That last one came from Atlantic Monthly, referring to a story called “Russian Winter.” And it’s true, that story did end weakly. Not until 2003, when I still hadn’t managed to publish it anywhere, did I admit that it wasn’t meant to be a story at all. Fortunate that I did—because five years later, after much research, writing, and revision, that story became my first novel.

In order to complete Russian Winter, I quit my job (a hard-to-snag fulltime teaching position) and applied for various fellowships instead. My experience with story submissions had trained me well; I kept plugging away, no matter what happened, fueled more by hope and desire than by any definite prospects. Unlike my stories, though, the finished novel received its first offer within a day of being sent out. It then sold at auction and went on to find publishers in 18 other countries.

Since coming out this fall, the book has gradually been finding more readers, and I’ve received fan letters that elate me even more than those early “nice rejections” did. I’ve also received letters that aren’t necessarily praise, such as the one from an Italian reader asking me to please explain a part of the ending that she wasn’t sure about.

So you can probably understand why, rather than toss that green spiral notebook out with the rest of the old papers from my desk, I’ve kept it in one of the metal drawers. Because surely at some point as I work on my next book, when writing itself starts to feel impossible and I wonder why I even bother in the first place, I’ll need a reminder all over again: that you never know which of your failures might turn into success—or which weak endings might ultimately lead to something much better. - Daphne Kalotay

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