Hello and welcome back to HYPER/FIXATED (formerly Throughlines, if you missed the memo), a weekly newsletter for the ideas and feelings we just can’t stop thinking about.
As many of you know, I have spent the last several months thinking about rejection.
pssst: wondering why I’m writing about rejection? Start here:
I have to say, y’all, I thought January was going to be my most exciting month of the 1,000 Rejections Challenge with my CNBC interview and securing a contract job. But the rejections have kept flowing, I’ve continued putting myself out there, and I’ve been genuinely shocked by all the things that happened this month:
I attended a writing residency in the North Carolina mountains that I never would have applied for had it not been for this challenge.
I was rejected from Sewanee, one of the most competitive summer writing conferences. The rejection stung, but I still hadn’t heard from some others, so I tried to keep my hopes up.
I GOT A FULL-TIME JOB! I am now the senior editor of a tech magazine in DC. holy shit!
Those of you who have been with me since the beginning of this newsletter know that I lost my job in federal AIDS research due to the Tr*mp administration/DOGE and—along with literal hundreds of thousands of fellow federal employees—found myself set adrift in the most volatile job market since the ‘08 recession. I found my way with freelancing for a while, but I soon realized that a 9-5 job would be better for me & my family. I may make a post later about this decision…let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in this.
I tried to negotiate my salary at my new job but was shot down. However, I countered with the ability to continue running my paid Substack tier and managed to get that written into my employment contract. A win is a win!
I got to reject a potential employer👀 listen, I know that’s not what this challenge is about, but I have to admit that after applying to and getting rejected from jobs for literally over a year, it felt a liiiiittle bit satisfying to send my own “appreciate your interest, but I will be moving in another direction” email after I accepted the offer from my current job. just a little.
That didn’t stop me from getting rejected from a few more jobs after I had already accepted my new one. such is life, I suppose.
And finally, the update I am most excited about: I was accepted into the McCormack (formerly Tin House) Summer Writing Workshop [internal screaming!!!]. You may recall that I wrote about getting waitlisted for this last month. I was paired with my first choice author, Mattilda B. Sycamore, who lived through and has written extensively about the AIDS crisis, which is an instrumental part of my novel-in-progress.
It does not strike me as an exaggeration to say this workshop is the opportunity of a lifetime. For those of you that are in the literary world, you know what it means. For those who aren’t, just know I burst into tears when I read the email.
If you’ll allow me to go diary-entry here for a moment: The public and private reaction to this incredible opportunity has been a little strange.
On one hand, I have never worked harder for anything in my writing life. I have been drafting and revising and applying and getting rejected and trying again on this single project for over a year, amidst all the rejection from the insane job market.
So when the McCormack email finally came in, it felt like my whole body exhaled. Of course I wanted to celebrate it out loud. This newsletter has watched me get knocked down over and over again; it felt important to let y’all see me get a win, too.
On the other hand, I’m acutely aware that this is an opportunity a lot of writers wanted and didn’t get. I know because I have been that person—refreshing my inbox, watching other people post their big news, trying to be happy for them while also grieving for myself and wondering when it would be my turn. I wrote about jealousy a while back, and I still go back to that piece because those feelings haven’t magically disappeared just because I’m on the other side of the email this time.
Seriously—I literally made myself go back and read that post when I was still on the waitlist spiraling while watching other writers on social media post about their acceptance.
So I’ve been sitting in this weird in-between place: I don’t want to mute my joy, but I also don’t want to be the person who seems to be triumphantly waving an acceptance in people’s faces. I keep asking myself, how do you celebrate a hard-earned yes in a community built on people hearing no all the time?
What I hope comes through in sharing this is not “look what I got,” but “look what is possible when you keep trying, even after years that feel like one long, continuous ‘no.’” If you’re somewhere in the jealousy place right now—toward me, or toward anyone—I get it. I’ve been there. I will be there again. I want this space to make room for both: our envy and hope, our disappointment, and our eventual screaming-into-the-void acceptance email. All of it belongs.
If you are struggling with rejection—especially if you’re struggling with it as an aspiring writer and/or novelist—I highly encourage you to check out this post from caro claire burke, author of the new NYT bestseller YESTERYEAR:
The way I see it, you can look at posts like this two ways: “that looks like a fucking slog; I could never handle that many rejections,” OR, “even bestselling authors get rejected, and every rejection is one step closer to that dream.”
I track all of my submissions in a spreadsheet tracker that has formulas to count rejections and acceptances, as well as calculate my goal completion rate and acceptance rate. You can download a free copy for yourself here.
April Rejection count: 6
April “No Response” count: 2
April Acceptance count: 7
Yearly Rejection count (rejection + no response): 102
Yearly Acceptance count: 17
To make things slightly easier on myself (I am going for 1,000 of these, after all), I’m counting my “No Response” towards my rejection goal. That brings my Goal Completion to 10.2% and my Acceptance Rate to 16.6%.
If you’ve been keeping up with my monthly recaps, you know that April is comparatively pretty light. I blame that on a whole week spent at my writing residency focusing only on my book, plus the lack of job applications now that I’ve secured a full-time gig. I will need to get creative next month on how to keep the momentum going!
I love celebrating folks in the community who’ve been participating in the 1,000 Rejections Challenge, as well as people who are out there doing the work. If you’d like to be featured in next month’s Rejection Report, send me a DM, comment, or reply to this email!
Anna Mackenzie has gone pretty viral for her “shoot your shot Wednesday” strategy—I encourage y’all to take a look at her ethos and incorporate it into your Rejection Challenge work.
Zach & Kelly Murphy wrote about rejections in their post yesterday. This line in particular stuck out to me:
In the world of short story writing and submissions, rejections come with the territory. A lot of them. You’ll always receive way more rejections than acceptances. It’s just the nature of it. What’s important is that you don’t let those rejections get you down. That one acceptance can make all those rejections worth it.
My dear author friend Natalie has applied to five European writing residencies in the last two weeks, since she and her husband just moved to Austria. Go Nat go!
A few folks have approached me to pitch their current hyperfixation for my Deeply/Invested series. This totally counts toward the challenge (hint: I’ll probably be an easy ‘yes’ to add to your list). The first edition of this series is coming next week with Ariane Elizabeth Scholl!
It’s so exciting to see folks start to view rejection in a different light—who says a silly internet trend can’t get us meaningful results?
And for those of you going on this journey with me, let me know in the comments: How are things going for you so far? Where is your rejection count at for 2026? Let’s celebrate the uncomfortable together!
Rejection is hard. Let’s get through it together.
xoxo Ashley
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