What's Better Than an Acceptance?

A Sunday Shortstack

One of my favorite essays of the dozens I’ve published in the last three+ years appeared in The Smart Set after at least ten rejections.

The no’s did not faze me.

I believed deeply in the piece about my late mother and took each rejection as an opportunity to revisit the essay and ask myself questions. Did it flow smoothly? Was the opening strong enough? Did the details work to make it vivid? Did it need any cuts? Was the title right?

That last question turned out to be half of the solution to its publication. Most of the versions included the word “Mother” in their title but that finally seemed a bit obvious. “Portrait of a Lady” hit me as a much better choice for a study of an elegant, dignified, and sometimes hilarious woman. And it worked for me as someone who had read Henry James’s novel The Portrait of a Lady many times.

Something about that title seemed to magnetize a new opening about my mother visiting her demented aunt in a very upscale retirement home when I was young. That opening felt organic and I finally felt I had the right package to submit, but publication also depended on an editor feeling the same way. Well, The Smart Set editor did. Quickly, too.

The essay now will have a second life. Details when the link is available.

Lev Raphael edits, coaches, and mentors writers at writewithoutborders with forty years of experience publishing, editing, and teaching at universities, writing conferences, and online. He’s authored twenty-seven books in many genres and has seen his work appear in fifteen languages, taught at colleges and universities, and widely anthologized. He’s taught creative writing at Michigan State University, Regents College in London, and been invited to teach creative writing at Leipzig University in Germany.

Image by Moos Grün from Pixabay