Why the Big Publications Reject Your Work

5 Reasons that justify their rejections.

After spending a lot of time writing and editing your stories a zillion times, you finally hit the icon - “Add to publication.”

Red-cheeked, you blush mentally, feeling that the draft is the perfect one. You feel ecstatic. Brimming with exuberance and zeal, you pat yourselves, “I know it, this is a superb story; flawless and impeccable. My best story to date”.

You overflow with confidence that you’ve minimized all the possible sources of errors. You sleep like a baby. Carefree and stress-free.

But the next day (or after some weeks), the bomb drops!

You get a private message from the editor of the publication:

You feel devastated. You had check-marked all the boxes that satisfy the publication's criteria, yet it didn’t see the light of the day. Sometimes you feel like the end of the world as you had not expected that rejection.

This is the story of almost every writer on Medium. But you must not take rejections personally.

I did not get published in the bigger publications for six months after joining Medium. And so, I was also getting bothered by rejections and often hurled mental abuses. But when I discovered the reality, I not only felt ashamed but also stopped taking rejections personally.

These rejections have made me strong as a writer and as a human being. Developing mental resilience by understanding the editor’s perspective helped me get through big publications like The Startup, Curious, MindCafe, The Ascent, and Invisible Illness.

Here’s what I have learned and experienced about rejections from my Medium journey as a writer, editor, and owner of a publication called Spiritual Secrets.

We’ll start from the evident reasons to the subtle ones.

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