The 5R I shouldn’t have ignored before submitting to publications

When a publication turns down your work for the first time, it stings you in places you thought no one could ever reach.

You’ve put your heart and soul into it, and now your ego is bleeding inside out.

It is what it is, it hurts.

You’re not supposed to feel this bad. It’s ok.

It’s not the end of the world!

They didn’t like your work, so what?

Well, I’m just going to cut this bullshit.

Whether it’s an emotional or professional rejection, the feeling is there. Downplaying it won’t solve anything. Worse, you might let go of something more substantial, like self-assessment, motivation, and eventually finding some answers.

Here is the rule of the 5R I shouldn’t have overlooked before submitting my work to a publication.

Reach the minds

Why are you writing what you’re writing? What’s your aim? It has to be crystal clear. You can’t expect people to read your mind the way they read your lines. It’s even harder if you’re writing fiction. The reader should be able to understand the complexity of a character, seeded in your intellect. It has to be reliable and believable, even if the plot would take place on Mars.

Poetry might be challenging too. It doesn’t follow any logic, rather than it reveals feelings bursting from within. Readers will taste the beauty of words, but they might fail to understand them. That’s why the choice of words matters. Poetry comes with a rhyme, so poets can shine, but beware of the redline.

‘’When they become so derivative as to

Become unintelligible, the

Same thing may be said for all of us, that we

Do not admire what

We cannot understand.’’

Marianne Moore

Research

If I’ve learned something, especially when writing about politics, religion, or race, is that research is crucial. My last article- Islamophobia and Islamic Fundamentalism: A secret love story, is a very good example. I needed to back up my ideas, especially that I belong to the Muslim community. I stretched in thorough research, and all I found were contradictions.

‘’In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five.’’

George Orwell

So, I collected arguments from both sides to sustain my case, which needed trustworthy sources. If I had supported my view with “facts” from FoxNews or Islam.com, I would have felt unreliable.

I looked for essays on Jstor (as a university student) to defend my ideas with academic work. I used Britannica to explain concepts in an unbiased way. Regarding the press, I usually go for the less partial newspapers like The New York Times, BBC, and L’Internazionale(It).

The point is to always do fact-checking.

It’s not because you’ve known something all your life that it makes it true.

Reshape

You start with a plan, but down the road, things might take another turn. News ideas flow in, new evidence comes into the light, and you need to embed them the best you can. I wrote an article about institutionalized racism -Your name is an insult to the nation- and I’ve tackled it by answering a couple of questions: Who’s causing the controversy? What happened? Who triggered it? What followed up?

Luckily, the curators have been very supportive. They guided me through the whole thing, and they’ve been right about some points which I couldn’t see back then. Why should I include a paragraph, which jeopardizes the cohesion of my article? Yes, talking about the controversy from a legal viewpoint is fair and square. Yet, it doesn’t need an irrelevant historical background.

In the end, It’s all about consistency.

Revise

The first thing I did after I had seen the ‘’we’re going to pass on that one! ‘’ email was to ask myself, why didn’t they publish my article? It’s wasn’t perfect, but it was witty, in the loop, and reflective. I answered back with a thank you note, and rushed into the reading part. Here is what I found out.

First of all, I made a bunch of mistakes. All kinds of mistakes I shouldn’t have made. Some had to do with grammar, while others were lacking the style. As I engaged in a reread, some sentences looked pretty good. Still, they had no use in the article. I had used Grammarly and Hemingway editor. They’re both helpful when it comes to correcting grammatical and formatting mistakes. Still, you can’t follow their suggestions to the letter. Your idea is yours, and only you can say it the way you shape it in your cerebral cortex. Revising is unnegotiable for another motive, which I’ll be discussing it in the last R.

‘’I write by hand, making many many corrections. I would say I cross out more than I write. I have to hunt down for words when I speak, and I need to do the same when writing.’’

Italo Calvino

No Rush

There are two reasons why you shouldn’t rush into submitting a draft.

Firstly, explore all your options. There is a bundle of publications out there. You don’t want to submit your work based on the number of readers, as I did. I know it matters, but do you know what matters even more? Being accepted for curation, and that begins with picking the right publication for your piece. Look for more suitable publications, and become one of their writers.

As you wait for a welcome notification from them, you have a bigger fish to fry.

After finishing your writing, you can leave it in the draft for a while. Don’t submit it right the way! I’m not delusional, just don’t. Here is why.

When I finish writing an article, I let it cool off for a while. Like a cake, once out of the oven, you don’t eat right the way.

I realized that if I’m passionate about what I’m writing, I tend to get soaked up, which makes it quite impossible for me to put things in perspective. For this reason, I leave it in a draft for one hour or even for a whole day. This way, when I start revising it, I’m usually more lucid. If I’m not entirely convinced, I’ll let it cool off again, and so on.

‘’For reason, ruling alone, is a force confirming; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore let your soul exalt your reason to the height of passion, that it may sing. And let it direct your passion with reason, that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes.’’

Khalil Gibran

To sum up, refusals are unavoidable. Yes, it’s not the best feeling in the world, and there will be other times when rejections will knock at your door, but they won’t knock you down. Whether you submit your work to a publication or not, the 5 R rule may always be useful. In the end, we all want to feel beauty and authenticity in the lines we’ve brought to life.