Submission Sunday 10.6.24: The Rejection Interview with Diana Wagman

Our latest rejection interview: "I’d rather write all day and all night for a hundred days than research a lit journal and send a story out."

Happy Sunday, writers! Thank you for subscribing.

Herein I continue my quest to interview successful people about their experiences with rejection. I’m grateful to writers Cecil Castellucci, Kate Maruyama, Camden Noir, Tamara MC, and Jennifer R. Edwards for agreeing to participate in The Rejection Interview series, and next up we have award-winning novelist Diana Wagman. I’ve known Diana for a long time—as a writer and as an instructor—and I’m so grateful that she agreed to describe her rejection experience for Submission Sunday. The prospect originally came up when Diana shared a recent rejection with me. We’re all in the same boat, even if you have a bio like this:

Diana is the author of six published novels. Her second, Spontaneous, won the PEN West Award for Fiction. She has had short stories and essays in Electric Literature, Triquarterly, Salon, and elsewhere and is an occasional contributor to the LA Times.

Diana’s other novels are Skin Deep, Bump, The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets, Life #6, and Extraordinary October. I hope we all have one of those. Let’s get this interview started…

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SS: Thanks so much for agreeing to this interview, Diana! Would you say that you fear rejection? Why or why not?

DW: I wasn’t always afraid of rejection. Perhaps it was arrogance, maybe it was just that I wasn’t getting much of it—or writing as much—but lately yes, I am afraid of receiving yet another rejection. I’m afraid of the sick feeling in my stomach and the doubt that always follows a rejection. I’ve been sending out a lot, two short stories and one essay, at the same time I’m querying for a new agent. The rejections have been coming daily. On my birthday. On vacation. The effect is cumulative.

Sometimes what I feel is less fear and more despair. I want to shout the question: what more do I have to do? I’d rather write all day and all night for a hundred days than research a lit journal and send a story out.  

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SS: What does literary rejection mean to you?

DW: I know literary rejection is not personal. The editors/readers/interns are not rejecting me per se, but this story. And they’re rejecting it for a variety of reasons. They may like the story but they have another with a mouse under the bed or whatever my story happens to be about. They may know it’s not right for their particular readership—despite the research I’ve done and sample stories I’ve read. It may just have been a bad day for mouse stories—maybe they had one under the bed at home.

It feels personal, as if I’d gone on an audition and the casting person said you’re too short or too old or too fat, but it’s really not. It’s a combination of things that I have no control over. All I can do is write the best story I know how and trust that someone, somewhere will see it as I do. It just takes one.

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SS: What’s a rejection that you mourned at the time but now are grateful for?