It’s easy to sit behind your desk as a writer and write and submit, write and submit, with very little to show for it.
Over the past two years I’ve been regularly submitting short fiction to literary journals and websites around the world, and keeping track of it all through a very trend excel spreadsheet (Sam Beckbessinger, I know you’ll be proud). I mark ones that have been sent and rejected in red, and ones that have been accepted in green.
The results are… well, they’re a lot of things. In 2024 I submitted 24 stories, and one was accepted for publication. It’s forthcoming in the Afritondo collection later this year. So far in 2025 I’ve submitted 13 stories, and I’ve had two accepted. One is forthcoming later this year in the Rosebank Writers flash fiction collection. The other, The Return, was published this month on Omenana. Here’s a preview:
It came in a box.
I don’t know what we were expecting, exactly. Maybe a special carry case, or at the very least something cozy. The box was corrugated cardboard, the kind that smells strong and is horrible to touch. Coarse. The box was not fitting for the contents is what I’m trying to say.
When I heard the doorbell, I said to Lou, my husband, I said, ‘Lou, it’s here!’ And Lou said, ‘Georgia, I don’t think we should be calling it an “it”, do you?’ And then I said, ‘Oh Jesus, Lou, just open the damn door and let the delivery guy in.’ An inauspicious start if there ever was one.
The delivery man was all full of smiles and congratulatory remarks.
‘Other couples have been really pleased with their orders.’
‘That’s good,’ I said, wanting the interaction to be done so we could unbox.
‘The company has had almost no returns at all so far.’
‘Almost none?’ Lou said, and I gave him a look that told him now wasn’t the time. There just wasn’t space in my heart, you know, for any thoughts of ever sending it back.
It took a while to get ours. Once they hit the market everyone wanted one, and I mean everyone. It had been decades since anyone had a real one, so the idea that we could all have a try and see what it had been like in the old days was … I don’t know, there was some novelty in that, I guess. There was a waiting list as long as the oceans are deep.
The thing about them was that in a way, they made everyone equal. You didn’t have to have special skills, or take a test, or have a home inspection. You could just get one and go from there.
Why am I sharing my quite depressing publishing stats with you? Because I often read published writing and think – wow, this is amazing, and assume (probably incorrectly) that those writers just press send and get an inbox full of acceptance letters. The truth is probably something more like mine – lots of submissions, lots of rejections, and a few lucky acceptances.
So, if you’d like to write and submit and fail and repeat and maybe succeed with me, come along to the writing workshop this Friday, 15 August 2025, from 9am – 1pm SAST. Email jenthorpewrites@gmail.com to sign up.
Jen Thorpe 