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Join Suzy as she chats this week with her Virtual Assistant, Liz J. Bradley, about her own writing journey. They discuss the milestone of receiving 100 short fiction and poetry rejections, and the systems and processes Liz put into place to get there.
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Podcast Episode Transcript (unedited)
Suzy Vadori: [00:00:00] Welcome to Show. Don’t Tell Writing with me, Suzy Vadori, where I teach you the tried and true secrets to writing fiction nonfiction that are gonna wow your readers broken down step by step. We’re gonna explore writing techniques. I’m gonna show you a glimpse behind the scenes of successful writers’ careers that you wouldn’t have access to otherwise.
And I’m also gonna coach writers live on their pages so that you can learn and transform your own storytelling. Whether you’re just starting out, you’re drafting your first book, you’re editing, or you’re currently rewriting that book, or maybe even your 10th book, this show’s gonna help you unlock the writing skills that you didn’t even know you needed, but you definitely do.
I’m so looking forward to helping you get your amazing ideas from your mind onto your pages in an exciting way for both you and your readers, so that you can achieve your wildest writing dreams, [00:01:00] and you’re gonna also have some fun doing it. Let’s dive in. On today’s show, no Tell Writing podcast. We have none other than Liz j Bradley, the amazing member of Team Susie, who has been with me since the very beginning.
She shared with me a milestone recently that she had hit, which is the hundred rejections. Which was her goal, and I was like, we’re totally doing a podcast on this. So here it is today. It actually ended up being two podcast episodes, so you’ll hear it this week and again next week in today, she’s gonna share with us what it feels like to get a hundred rejections and she’s gonna talk about how she did it.
This is for her short fiction and where she finds places to submit to how much she got paid. She has created and submitted in two years, 38 different pieces, which is a mix of poetry and prose. She has submitted over 141 submissions. She has received not only a hundred rejections, but [00:02:00] blown the doors off it.
She’s at 1 0 6 at the time that we’re recording, and she has nine stories that are out there in the world that have been paid for and published in reputable places. She’s gonna tell you how she did that in today’s episode. Liz j Bradley grew up in a small town in central New York, but then she bought career in the theater that took her from the ocean to the tundra to the Eiffel Tower.
In a creative pivot, she began to explore new worlds on the page instead of on the stage. Now she spends her days as an executive assistant. One of the people that she supports is me, although she has others and her nights, she spends telling space stories through prose and poetry. She hosts The Side By Snacks podcast, and you can find her online at https://www.lizjbradley.com.
I am so excited to have Liz back on the podcast. I’ve had her on the podcast before talking about her love for Dolly Parton. But today we are gonna be talking about Liz’s writing, and I am [00:03:00] just so thrilled because I actually don’t know all the answers to this and we don’t talk about it all the time.
Liz doesn’t talk about it all the time, but it is impressive. Liz, welcome.
Liz J. Bradley: Thank you. I’m really excited to be here and chat too, ’cause. I forget sometimes that I don’t share everything while I’m working with you about all the writing that’s happening kind of off stage. So yeah, I’m excited.
Suzy Vadori: So, so impressive.
Okay, so this month you crossed over a hundred rejections and shared that with us and what’s going on in your world, Liz? So it’s been a really fun journey to witness. But how did you get on this path? Like searching for a hundred rejections? Was that the goal?
Liz J. Bradley: So I read a lot of articles when I started writing some shorter fiction.
I read a lot of articles where they were like, you should aim for rejections. Rejections should be the goal. And a lot of people are like, get a hundred rejections and. [00:04:00] I like the idea on the surface of collecting those rejections, especially when I used to work in theater, I would apply for hundreds of jobs and it was about just getting the quantity out there.
So it was the same kind of thing with short fiction was submit to everything and gather the rejections. And if you’re counting rejections, you’re not gonna feel as bad about them because they’re the goal. And I don’t fully resonate with that because I still feel like I get in my feelings with reject still.
Like even after over a hundred at this point, you’re not desensitized. You’re not desensitized to No, no, like it’s not as bad. It’s definitely not as bad, but I let myself feel my feelings for about a day. And I’ve created this practice around submitting where for me the goal is the number of submissions because that’s what I can control.
I can’t control. Sometimes you send stuff out and [00:05:00] you literally never hear. So like I can’t count that rejection because they just never give it to me. There’s no closure or anything. So that’s really frustrating, but you’re waiting for it. Because I’ve got big spreadsheets and I know like I’m waiting on all of these rejections.
So for me, I count. Submissions. So when I set a goal, I set a goal of, I wanna submit this many times, but I thought it was really fun, kind of when I, it feels weird to say that it was fun when I saw that number of rejections tick over to a hundred. I was waiting for it and I actually was sitting at 99 rejections and I was like, Ooh, in the next email I get I’m gonna hit that milestone.
And then I got an acceptance instead. And there was a little me that was like, what a terrible tongue. Right, right. I was like, oh, like that was supposed to be a rejection ’cause I was gonna hit a hundred. But it was cool ’cause I got literally the next day they seem to come in waves. It’ll be like, here’s four [00:06:00] rejections in a week.
And then you don’t hear anything for like a month. Yeah, that’s good because I was
Suzy Vadori: looking at that and you said that you let yourself sit with a rejection for about a day, and I was like, that’s a hundred days. Liz. We need to have a conversation that you’re sitting with Pet Disappointment a hundred days over.
It’s been two years, right? It’s been two, almost exactly
Liz J. Bradley: two years. I started just about two years ago submitting my first piece. I started out with just one thing that I had written, and I started submitting that two years ago, and at this point. I have, I think 38 different things between fiction, poetry, and nonfiction that I’ve had out on submission.
So yeah, it’s grown up.
Suzy Vadori: Let’s break that down for a second because this is important. This is why people are here. They wanna know. They want behind the scenes. What in the heck are you doing, Liz? So stats that you shared with me, and these are about a week old and Liz is really a powerhouse. So they’ve probably changed, but.
141 [00:07:00] submissions. Right. That means that you’ve applied to have your work published 141 places. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Just for short fiction. So this doesn’t count short fiction submissions. Yeah, we’re gonna talk about that in a second. So 141 short fiction submissions that is 38 different. Pieces, like different pieces of short fiction.
So you haven’t written something unique for each one of those, and we’ll talk about that in a minute. Correct? We have, I’ve got nine acceptances, is that right? Yep. We’re still sitting at nine. Nine acceptances, but that’s amazing. Can you talk about that for a minute? Yeah. Because like huge success, you have been published and paid for nine pieces of short fiction in the last
Liz J. Bradley: two years.
Tell us about that. So my submission strategy, I start at the top. So to kind of fight my own imposter syndrome in all of this, I try not to self limit. So [00:08:00] when I’m writing, it’s mostly science fiction. So I’m looking at top tier science fiction magazines. So we’re talking as AOVs, we’re talking Clark’s world.
All of the ones I basically go and there’s a really great website called the Submission Grinder, and that is where I find most of the places, if it’s not somewhere that I was familiar with, you can go there and search. It’s amazing. And I sort by how much they pay. Which is one of the options. So when I started, one of my big goals was to be able to join cwa, which is the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers Association.
And the way to do that is you have to be paid at least a hundred dollars for your fiction, and you have to be paid that you have to twice, is that right? You have to be published at least once. Okay. And be paid at least 8 cents per word. And if one publication gets you there, that’s [00:09:00] okay. Sometimes, like if you’re writing something shorter, you may have to be published more times to reach that threshold, but that was my goal when I started, was get that a hundred dollars and then be able to join this professional organization.
And so I submit by sorting by who’s gonna pay me the most, and that’s how I started. I love it. Yeah, because there was a part of me that was like, I know that sometimes I’ll be like, well, they wouldn’t want it anyway, like I’m just starting out. And all of those like bad voices in your head that tell you you aren’t good enough.
And I said that I was just gonna ignore that and start at the top. And if the top didn’t want me, I would go to the next line and then the next line. And then the next line. And so. Because I did it that way, the very first thing that I sold was enough to qualify me for ua, which was awesome because it was just, I don’t [00:10:00] know if I had just started by limiting myself, if I would’ve gotten there as quickly as I had.
And I was really proud that I could do that in the first shot, and that gave me the confidence to keep doing that, you know, and to keep saying that what I’m writing is of a quality high enough to be paid professional rates. So yeah, that’s where I start.
Suzy Vadori: Amazing. And. So many questions. My goodness, I don’t even know where to start.
This is so fascinating, and I just, as an aside to our listeners, this is why Liz and I make a ferocious team on Team Suzy because she sets goals and she crushes them, and it’s kind of what we like to do around here. So yeah, so when, when was that? Very first. So how many months had you been submitting before you got that first acceptance and you kind of crushed your goal and were able to join CFO right away?
Liz J. Bradley: It was probably about six months in, so it was definitely, it was not the first piece that I had started submitting back in 2023. I [00:11:00] started at the top. I went all the way to, I exhausted all those markets. Nobody wanted to pay for it, so I pulled it. And I’m going to use that for something else because I would like, if somebody’s not gonna pay me for it, I’m going to use it in a way that feels right to me.
It’s a short story that kind of works with the novel that I’ve written. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna hold onto that one. And about six months in, it was a short piece I have written with a critique group. We do props every month, and it was a story that came out of that. Then there was that one. I worked with the editor because actually the piece was only about 600 words when I sold it.
And they said, I really like this. The writing is really great, but I think that there’s something more to this story like, do you want to work with me on it? Which is super rare and like I know how lucky I got because an editor. Took the time to kind of [00:12:00] work with me on this piece and we worked for another month or so on it, and it, it expanded all the way to a thousand words, which was the top limit for the flash fiction magazine.
And she just kind of asked all the right questions and poked and prodded and was like, well, what about this and this? And it really dug into what the heart of that story was. Was that story about list? It was. It’s called a Soft and Silent Glow, and at its core it’s about being able to live with grief, which was not what I thought when I started.
It was this kind of dystopian candle shop, and I was playing with the idea of light and darkness and. The woman who runs the candle shop is she lost her child and the whole part of this is her talking with someone else [00:13:00] who’d lost someone, his wife in old age, and it’s her realizing that she was punishing herself.
That she needed to move on. And that move on piece was what was missing. When I was first submitting it, I was too scared to go there and the editor saw that and they were like, Hey, like there’s something more for her. And I literally was crying in a coffee shop when I figured it out that I was like, it’s, she realizes that there’s nothing left there for her and.
You know, there’s another little child and she realizes that child’s gonna die because there’s radiation everywhere and it’s just, it’s really bad. And I, I didn’t know it was going there, but it felt right and the editor could see that. And so we worked for another couple months and then it didn’t come out for like six months.
So it was a long process. It took a year for me writing it to it being actually published. But I kept [00:14:00] kind of having those touchstone moments where. It was being submitted for a long time and then it was being edited, and then it just had to fit into their production schedule because they wanted it for a specific issue of the magazine where it fit into the theme.
They kind of built it around what they were getting at the time, so I had to wait another like four months for that issue to come out. So it was a long balance. Yeah,
Suzy Vadori: so a thousand words is four pages. I just wanna say like roughly four pages, right? Like 250 words a page is pretty typical. So we’re gonna link to all of Liz’s short fiction so that you guys can enjoy it too.
It’s, they’re quick reads, but just so, so amazing. You put your heart and soul in it. Okay? Whether it’s that one or others, what do people pay for short fiction.
Liz J. Bradley: Professional rate is considered 8 cents a word. That is what SWA sets the professional rate. So they say this is what it is and it’s 8 [00:15:00] cents a word.
There are magazines who will pay more for it. So like Clark’s World will pay 10 cents a word and there are lots that will pay less or nothing. Sometimes you’ll see like a flat fee. So that’s really common with like anthologies. So you’ll see an anthology and they say, we are accepting stories from, you know, 1000 to 8,000 words.
We’re gonna pay $50 a story or a hundred dollars a story. And that’s regardless of length. So it’s something that it varies widely. There are more non-paying markets than paying markets. But really it runs the gamut. You can find everything, but the professional rate starts at 8 cents a word, and that’s, that’s where you start qualifying for.
Things like cwa,
Suzy Vadori: we have enough information in what Liz just said to tell you that you were well above that 8 cents a word, or you wouldn’t have applied for CWA in that first one. So that’s great [00:16:00] and And I can see that because you’re aiming high, right? So really smart. I mean, we’re not gonna get rich doing this, right?
Yeah. So what was the goal? Can you share with the listeners because. We talk about short fiction, but really you set out to write a novel when we first met and when you’ve been working with my team for many, many years. And that was when you kind of were taking a breaking from theater in 2020. In 2021 when theater was on hiatus.
And you kind of shifting gears. Yeah. So how did this journey kind of complement your goal, which is to write a, a novel and be traditionally published?
Liz J. Bradley: Yeah, I had written three novel length pieces. I won’t call them novels because they’re not done. So I had written two, two of those when I decided that I was going to start writing short fiction, and it was a [00:17:00] combination of two things.
One, I was getting really. Bogged down with how long it took to write a novel. Like it was really frustrating to me. Just the amount of time it takes. I think everybody is like, oh, I wanna write a book. And then we all hit that realization of exactly what we’ve decided to do. At maybe halfway or once we finish our first draft and we’re like, oh my gosh, this takes so.
Much time and I needed like a dopamine hit of finishing something and I knew that the novels were not gonna do that for me like right away. And I also realized that I needed to improve things like characterization. It was a no, I was getting from beta readers like that. I, it was hard to tell the difference between my characters.
That my voice, everybody gets the note, you know, it’s so elusive, like your author voice, it’s not clear. And [00:18:00] people are like, well, what is it? And it’s like, well, you know it when you see it. And I decided that I wanted to work on all of those things. And the way for me to do that was writing short fiction, because you get through the whole process, you know, drafting.
Editing, revising, proofreading, formatting, submitting, like the whole thing can happen a lot faster than it can with a novel. And I found that iterating that process, just doing it again and again and again with different characters, different settings. I could try out different things and that’s honestly.
Where I found that elusive voice that people talk about, because I would write things and I was like, oh, I know how I would say this now. And you just do it enough time and you get there. So it was, I wanted to get better and I thought short fiction is the way to kind of [00:19:00] trick my brain because you could do these things with the novel, but my brain said no.
My brain said, you need to do something from start to finish over and over and over again until you find how to do it right and how to do it in the way that that is my voice. And. Yeah. And
Suzy Vadori: practice, right? Like we, like talk about this so often and I know Liz gets the opportunity to participate in all of my programs as a moderator, as a, as support, but also part of it.
And so I think there’s so many things that are just mechanical about writing a novel that you can, you can get so much better. We talked about this recently where he pulled up the. Novel esque projects and you were like, wow. Like I’ve comes so far because you’re writing. All the time, and you’re practicing these things and we talk about, you wouldn’t set out to be an artist without taking some lessons because [00:20:00] it’s really clear that you’re writing stick figures and not painting them.
Mona Lisa. And sometimes we don’t realize that our first attempts at writing are stick figures. And there are so many things that you can practice. So how did this, I mean, and so Liz is saying now she looks back at some of those original novels. She doesn’t even call them novels, but you can, yeah. And because they’re not really done and was like, woo, you know, I didn’t, I wish I could rewrite that.
We get better at it over time and you have dedicated so much time and gotten better. So of the two years, like we have nine acceptances, is that kind of starting to snowball? What was that in the, what was that in the first year versus the second year? How many rejections in each year? Like how did that work out?
Liz J. Bradley: So I’m looking at my dashboard. I can give you real numbers right now. Millennium, my, it’s, I have a friend sheet for everything. I really do, of course. And in 2023, when I started, I submitted five things and got two rejections and that [00:21:00] was it. But I only started submitting kind of in August, so I didn’t have a lot going on.
Then 2024, I made 62 submissions. I got three acceptances, 39 rejections. And then here was the really cool part. I got five personalized rejections. And so I say that like I get in my feelings about rejections and I don’t like to count them. I count every personalized rejection though. If you’re going to tell me that you really love my character.
Or that you could see this published in a different magazine and it just didn’t work for your venue or for this edition. I print those out. Like I don’t keep the form rejections those, I just move on. But personalized rejections have sometimes felt so empowering because those show me that the writing is good.
[00:22:00] Then it’s just about finding the right home for it. And most of the ones that have gotten personalized rejections end up selling somewhere else. It’s just about finding where they fit. So those five personalized rejections in the 2024 were huge for me. And then this year I’ve already submitted 74 times.
I’ve had six pieces accepted, but I’ve also had the most rejections 56 form rejections. And I’m up to four personalized rejections though, so we’re on track. Everything kind of keeps going, and part of that is just because I’ve got more pieces in the rotation, so I’m submitting more things. So more things are getting accepted because it’s about finding the right fit as opposed to Is my writing good enough?
I know it’s good enough. Yeah, it is. Been chosen and it’s, it feels so good to say that, like [00:23:00] I try to share that with my writers groups that I’m a part of. I’m like, you have to get to a certain point with your writing where you know that it is the best that you can do right now. And you know your writing is good enough.
And then the rejections don’t hurt as bad because it’s just about finding the right fit. And it’s so, I think it’s the theater background in me because I. It was all about when you’re getting cast, you’re putting yourself out there and you’re putting like your literal body out there. You know, it’s you on a stage and somebody is like, I don’t like you.
And so you have, you have to, our writing feels really personal, but it’s, there’s a difference between somebody like looking at you, a person and being like, no, next, please. And I think that it’s easy for me to accept that the writing is good. Then when I’m told no for a piece, it just, it doesn’t [00:24:00] hurt as bad because I know it’s so good and I can trust myself that I know that the writing is where it needs to be.
It’s just about finding where it’s supposed to live, where it’s home really is. And part of that is just reading more. You know, I have to read more magazines. I have to. Find different venues so that I can find where each story might fit. Because not every story I write is appropriate for each place.
Suzy Vadori: Yeah.
And so why waste that editor’s time or your own time submitting something exactly. No isn’t gonna fit. The more you know, the more you know, right? Like the more you research, the more you get into it, the more you understand what each magazine or what each place is looking for in stories that they buy. So this is kind of making me sweat talking about all this, and I’m sure that there’s listers out there.
Besides the fact knowing that your writing is good is really an amazing first step. I [00:25:00] gotta say, there are many, many writers out there who wonder if the writing is good enough. And if you’re wondering that, it’s probably that you haven’t given yourself enough skills yet to be confident. And there probably is something to learn.
But I love that you say, not if your writing is good, but as good as you can make it. Right. And that’s the piece that we have to challenge ourselves because. There are also writers out there, a very smaller percentage, probably not the percentage that listening to this podcast ’cause they’re not trying to better themselves.
It just thinks that everything that they write is wonderful and has no idea that there’s anything to learn or doesn’t care if the reader doesn’t like it. And not talking to those people because I think that, you know, but maybe if they heard that challenge, is this the best you could do? The answer is no.
And they’re kind of going about blindly wondering why they’re getting all these rejections. Okay. But. How much time are you spending on this, Liz? Like you work full time, 60 hours a month for me. Plus, you know, you are a virtual assistant for other businesses as well, [00:26:00] and you are raising a family and you have a life.
Yeah. A really cool life. And you’re doing all of this. So how much time, like what are the rules that you set up and what’s your process for getting this machine going because it’s impressive.
Liz J. Bradley: Thank you. It’s what I’m doing now is not what I couldn’t have done when I started. So a lot of it, especially when I talk to friends who wanna start submitting, I’m like, just have one piece.
All you have to do is start with one thing. And I started with one, and my rule for myself was as soon as I got a rejection, I had to send it right back out. Like I’m not allowed to. Oh God. The worst. Yeah. I’m, I’m allowed to feel my feelings for about a day, but I’m not allowed to. I say this as like, somebody set these rules.
I set these rules. I’m, I know. It’s like,
Suzy Vadori: like you’re like [00:27:00] talking like yourself in the third person right now and moment.
Liz J. Bradley: I’m not allowed to clear the rejections email from my inbox until I’ve sent that piece back out to the next place on my list. So I will, I’ll spend some time. Wow, that is dis, it’s a lot.
Liz And Liz. Liz manages my inbox by the way, like seeing the rejection. So it’s a good motivation for me to get that back out there. And I found that. I have a list for most of my pieces of maybe the top like 10 places that I think it could go and set aside maybe an hour every other week or so to look at where do I wanna be sending these pieces?
If I see something on social media where it’s like, oh, this is a new thing, or I’ve read a story in a magazine, and I will just kind of put that on my list and then. Paying markets
Suzy Vadori: [00:28:00] preferably. Right? Paying markets. Paying markets.
Liz J. Bradley: And so if I see something it, it doesn’t feel like a lot of time when it’s just, okay, get the rejection, send it back out.
What took a lot of time was kind of the setup initially, and I have a really big spreadsheet where I have listed every piece of short fiction and every poem and every kind of nonfiction pitch that I have. And I have a status for them. So am I planning this? Is it just in the planning stage, drafting, editing?
Is it ready for submission? And then there’s kind of the, has it sold, has it been published? Did I retire it or did I abandon it? Because there are some pieces that I get to a point and I’m like, it’s not worth sending out anymore. I’m not in love with it. We’re just gonna move it off the table, or I don’t even finish the story and I say, [00:29:00] I’m not feeling it, and I leave it on my list.
So I feel accomplished and I can see, like I wrote, you know, this dozen stories and I set them aside. They’re just not here. I may pull a character from them, I may pull a setting or an idea, but that story specifically wasn’t working. So once I got that spreadsheet going. Which took a couple hours, but I like building spreadsheet, like organization is my jam.
Yeah, yeah. So I will never complain about doing spreadsheet work, so I spent a couple of hours doing that and now it feels really easy to just add a story in there and put it in the queue. Thank you so much for being
Suzy Vadori: on the show today, Liz and Liz actually runs this podcast as well, so she’s gonna have a blast listening to this again when she edits.
Come on the show anytime.
Liz J. Bradley: Awesome. Thank you so much, Susie. Bye.[00:30:00]
Suzy Vadori: Thanks for tuning in to show. No. Tell writing with me, Susie Vadori. Help me continue to bring you the straight goods for that book you’re writing or planning to write. Please consider subscribing to this podcast and leaving a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever else you’re listening. Also, visit susie Vadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list where you’ll stay inspired and be the first to know about upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community.
If you’re feeling brave, check the show notes and send us a page of your writing that isn’t quite where you want it to be yet for our show notes, tell. Page review episodes. Remember that book and your writing is going to open doors that you haven’t even thought of yet, and I can’t wait to help you make it the absolute best you’re feeling called to write that book.
Keep going, and I’m gonna be right here cheering you on. See you again next [00:31:00] week.