On Navigating 300 Rejections and Learning to Write Fearlessly with Maurice Carlos Ruffin

Welcome to our interview series, On Something with Somebody! This week, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, shares his thoughts on being a joyous and aggressive writer, the many rejections of his early career, celebrating with ice cream, and his submissions strategy.

"During a seven-year stretch, my work was rejected over 300 times by literary magazines. I had to accept that if I wanted to publish, I had to change both the work and my approach."

Kailey DelloRusso: When you were first starting out, how did you take rejection? And what did you learn from those first few rejections? 

Maurice Carlos Ruffin: I didn't take it well. The first rejection I can recall was from my undergraduate literary magazine. Frankly, I was devastated. I stopped writing stories for about four years and stopped submitting for maybe six.

Later, I came back to writing and went to grad school. I still got rejected quite often. In fact, during a seven-year stretch, my work was rejected over 300 times by literary magazines. Fortunately, I can thank Stephen King's On Writing for giving me perspective and gumption. He was rejected, I think 200 times before the age of 18. He used to pin the rejection slips on the wall above his typewriter. How could I complain?

Ultimately, I had to accept that if I wanted to publish, I had to change both the work and my approach. I sharpened my stories and became more strategic about my submission strategy. Basically, I made the stories sound more like the place I'm from (my weird, wonderful New Orleans) and made them faster-paced and more emotionally charged. For submissions, I used Duotrope, which allowed me to figure out which high-quality magazines I had the best shot of being published by. I entered many contests and won three. As Biggie Smalls said, "I went from negative to positive."

To read the full article on subclub.substack.com, click here