Awhile back, I wrote a short story that I really believe in. In grad school, my thesis adviser blithely told me that it would get published.

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “It has been rejected a lot.”

“How many times?” he said.

“I’m not sure. 20 times?”

“Well, keep going,” he said. “I’m sure you will get it published. It’s a good story.”

A couple of days ago, I counted how many times that short story has been rejected. The answer? 54 times.

Now, this is a good story, if I do say so myself. Everyone who reads it likes it. It even made one person cry–in a good way. And yet, it has been rejected 54 times.

When I say that writing is harder than I ever thought it would be going in, this is what I mean. Yes, I expect stories to get rejected. But when you know, know, that something you wrote is good, and it is still rejected this many times, you start to get a sense of how hard writing actually is. This is not a career for people who aren’t really stubborn and who don’t really love writing and reading.

However, seeing that number hasn’t been all bad. After moping for awhile, I took stock of all the short stories I had finished and considered publishable (there were many more I consider unpublishable). The number was pathetically small–something like 5 stories.

Then I looked at the number of short stories I had started and hadn’t finished. There were dozens of them. Maybe more.

It put things into perspective for me: Maybe I have focused too much on this one story. Maybe I need to finish more stories, enough to fill a collection. And then wait to see if those are rejected 54 times each.