New Yorker Rejections: It’s been my goal for about a hundred years to get a piece published in The New Yorker’s Shouts & Murmurs section. I’ve only been brave enough to submit something on spec once, back in 2020. I’d just handed in the final edits on Body Talk, Katie Sturino’s book about trying to stop shit-talking your body, which I had the absolute joy of co-writing. I had also just floated a new novel idea to my agent, who is very patient and used to me floating ideas that I then leave suspended in the ether and never finish. I was feeling very “I can do this,” is what I’m trying to tell you. So I did it!
The piece I submitted was rejected, which is a part of the writing process. Then I stopped writing, which is also a part of the writing process. Then I started writing and not-writing again, and I got a full-time job after four years of freelancing because freelancing was giving me a hernia, and I missed working in a team setting (HR answer!), and I wanted to take paid vacations.
Now that I am, once again, trying desperately to get to the end of at least one stupid book that I’ve started writing over the past ten years, I have begun to procrastinate by writing up these equally stupid little wannabe New Yorker Shouts & Murmurs pieces. You can only submit one piece at a time, and I am sure most will be rejected. I also have a recent handful of rejections from Vogue and The New York Times! So I thought I’d make a little sanctuary for them and turn out my rejected stories in a Substack pasture.
Thank you for being here! I missed this.