Writer's Perspective: Forget the Rules

How to Publish a Creative Non-Fiction

CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR: Lu Chixaro

How to Publish a Creative Non-Fiction

If you’ve been feeling discouraged about your writing or publishing progress lately, I want to tell you a little bit about Fortunes, an essay I just published in Electric Literature.

I started writing Fortunes in the summer of 2022, while the events it describes were still unfolding. This went against all the writing advice I’d heard for years: don’t write about something while you’re still living it. But I scribbled down a few paragraphs anyway.

A few months later, after I finally settled in Porto, I picked it back up. I spent that winter, spring, and most of the summer of 2023 going back to Fortunes sporadically between work, parenting, and starting our feedback group, the Porto Writers’ Workshop, with Hiten Chojer (you can read his latest story at Magazine-1: “Speeding”).

By August of 2023, I thought Fortunes was ready to submit. Emphasis on thought.

So I submitted. I sent it out to two lit mags. Then I sent it out to Electric Literature, a long-shot magazine. A friend of mine had published with them before landing a book deal with Flatiron, an imprint of one of the so-called “Big-Five” publishers in the U.S. Electric Lit liked it, but after two rounds of edits, they ultimately passed.

Not one to be typically knocked down by rejection, I submitted some more. Over the next year, I sent out Fortunes four more times. Seven submissions turned into seven rejections. By the end of 2024, after having no luck publishing in any genre for over a year and a half, I decided to take a break from writing.

As most of you know, winter in Porto can wear you down even when you’re not also dealing with existential questions about your creative work. By February, my lack of enthusiasm had become wildly apparent. My daughter asked me what I had been writing lately, and my answer was, “I haven’t been writing much.” She said, “Well, you should!” It seems small, but that short conversation is what sparked my return to Fortunes, the essay that told the crux—or the beginning—of our story, depending on how you look at it.

In March of 2025, Electric Literature reopened submissions for personal narrative, and I decided, against better judgment, to try again. I revised the essay based on the feedback from EL’s editors and brought it back to the workshop for one last round of discussion. Doing so was a great experience, and later that night, I sent it back to the editor who had originally passed on the piece. A few weeks later, to my surprise, they accepted it!

I want to give a heartfelt thank you to Olivia Orlandine, Olivia de Santos, Hiten, Rokas, Célia, Olga, and anyone else who provided feedback on the piece at the April PWW workshop, which was the very same day as Electric Lit’s submission deadline. You helped to make Fortunes what it is today.

But here’s what I’m really getting at—to get this piece published, I broke some cardinal writing rules:

1. Don’t write about things as you experience them, and

2. Definitely don’t send your work back to an editor who previously rejected it.

So I’m here to tell you to break the rules—selectively! And don’t ever, ever give up.

Fortunes comes out today in Electric Literature.

You can read it here: [Fortunes - Electric Literature] (TW: Violence).