How a rejected pitch led to something doubly good

on Goodnight Moon, postpartum mental health, Literary Mama, and LitHub

I fell in love with Margaret Wise Brown, author of Goodnight Moon, after my first son was born. One day at the library while my son crawled around the children’s section, I checked out all of her work they had in stock.

Her sentences are simple. Each line leans into rhythm and rhyme. A book about trains is actually about death — and eternal life. Bunnies are agents of everlasting love. And just as the reader feels they can predict what is next, she subverts our expectations with lovely last lines like, “here — have a carrot.”

In addition to her body of work, I devoured biographies about Brown. This prolific children’s writer never had children of her own. And her life was cut short by a tragic, sudden death.

Shortly after a surgery from which it seemed she had recovered, she “cancan kicked” her leg up into the air to celebrate her forthcoming discharge. This act dislodged a blood clot that cut off the supply of oxygen to her brain.

She died at age 42.

Look what she got for letting her guard down, I thought to myself after reading this biographical detail.

Sometimes your worst fears do come true.

Does that response seem a little dark? Well, a lot of my postpartum period felt dark. There was much about Margaret Wise Brown’s life that resonated with me. I didn’t just adore her books as art — I was interested in how she managed her own struggles with mood.

Each day, she tried to get out of her own (tumultuous) head by focusing on the physical objects in her New York apartment.

A comb. A brush. A bowl full of mush, perhaps?

And maybe, I thought as I read Goodnight Moon to my son in the nursery, she said goodnight to each of these objects, too.

Photo by Orlando on Unsplash

This — weaving in my own experience of reading Margaret Wise Brown with a narrative about the author herself — felt like an essay to me.

This is something you could try, too: consider a cultural artifact that has affected you deeply. Maybe a tv show, a children’s book, a piece of art.

Now, try writing parallel narratives: both a description of the artifact itself and a description of your experience the work. Then weave the two together. There are a number of outlets that publish essays of this sort.

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Before writing my actual essay, though, I decided to write a pitch. At first, to make the piece timely (and perhaps more likely to be accepted?) I pegged the piece to Mother’s Day because the holiday was coming up (this is my very least favorite holiday on the calendar, tell me in the comments if you feel the same way!)

If I were writing this pitch today, I might peg my piece to the new Goodnight Moon stamp collection (thanks,

Heidi Fiedler

, for turning me onto it!).

One of the first places I reached out to was LitHub. Here was my pitch:

Dear Eliza Smith,

The cause of Margaret Wise Brown’s death is the sort of thing I would have worried about in the immediate postpartum. Her demise was uncanny, illogical. Had it been an intrusive thought, any therapist would have advised me to let it float away like a balloon.   

After a seemingly smooth surgery to remove her appendix and an ovarian cyst, Brown celebrated her newly regained strength by performing a cancan kick into the air. Immediately, she became unconscious. The kick dislodged a blood clot. Within an hour, she was dead. She was 42 years old. Her death happened all because of a little celebration after a long slog of exhaustion.  

After birth, I found it hard not to fear joy. A day that felt too smooth, health that seemed too in tact, seemed like a tease – like leaning into it too fully would dislodge something dangerous and knock me out entirely.  

At bedtime, I read Goodnight Moon to my son. The narrator says good night to objects in the room, all items one can physically see and touch – except for in the last line. The book concludes saying, “good night noises everywhere.”  

Brown's life and writing would teach me how to say no to the noises in my own head, too, so that I could learn to enjoy being in the world again.

I hope you'll consider my timely Mother's Day essay, "Joy killed Margaret Wise Brown -- but she made me unafraid to feel it again." In this essay, I will argue that reading Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon during a difficult postpartum period gave me the courage to feel joy after trauma. 

And several days later, I received this reply from the editor:

Hi Anna, 

Thanks for writing! I enjoyed this pitch but ultimately will have to pass on it due to bandwidth and similar works in the pipeline. If you place it elsewhere, feel free to send me a link for inclusion in the Lit Hub Daily. 

This was the best kind of ‘no!’

No — but I like it. No — but I’ll give you some coverage if you place it. And obviously I had to try to publish the piece now.

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A takeaway: anytime someone shows interest in your writing— even if that interest is coupled with a rejection — take them seriously. People don’t offer invitations to submit more work, or to give media coverage, or anything, really, unless they mean it. Act on these offers. And while you need to be thoughtful and deliberate and produce high quality work, act soon so that they will remember you.

I ended up writing out a full draft of the essay (and not just a pitch), and I submitted it to various literary journals.

Another tip: if you’re submitting to popular outlets, you often just need a pitch. If you’re sending out to literary journals, you need the full essay. I knew I wanted to place this piece somewhere, regardless — and I also knew I really wanted to write the essay, even if it was never published — so I composed a full draft without the guarantee of publication.

The amazing Reflections editor at Literary Mama, Elizabeth Newdom, accepted my essay, and she and I worked on edits together over the course of several weeks.

With Elizabeth’s wonderful feedback, I highlighted more of my own story in the narrative (in the original draft, I was playing it safe and talking mostly about Brown). I think her editing made a world of difference in the quality of the piece.

You can read the final essay here: Goodnight Noises Everywhere – Literary Mama

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The day my essay went live with Literary Mama, I followed up with Eliza Smith at LitHub and asked if she would still be able to include my essay in the LitHub Daily roundup. She replied right away, and my piece was featured the next day.

You can see that here: Lit Hub Daily: September 21, 2023 ‹ Literary Hub

The great part about this publishing experience is that I received eyeballs from the readers of two wonderful outlets — and this was all because of the pitches I sent in the lead-up to placing the piece.

Though I am not as good at promoting pieces as I am pitching them (I’m working on it! And no longer working a full-time job but still having some childcare certainly helps with this component of the publishing process), I did post this piece in various parenting writing groups/threads on Facebook and X.

I had several editors at parenting outlets reach out to me with praise for the piece. And I think this praise helped me secure some future clips, too. All of this is to say that one piece of strong writing can help you gain any number of future assignments/opportunities. So don’t underestimate promotion as part of the publishing process!

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Thanks for reading about how I placed this literary personal reflection. Ask me anything about Margaret Wise Brown or my wonderful experience writing for Literary Mama in the comments.

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This is part of a monthly series called Path to Publication.

In it, I will unpack the story behind my stories. These reflections are part process, part strategy.

There will be clear takeaways for your own creative work. I will include sample pitches, along with editors’ names and rates (at the time my published pieces went live). I’m sharing the intel I’ve gathered in the hope that it can help you place your own work.

At the beginning of 2022, I had, essentially, zero bylines. Since then (in the span of two years), I’ve published over 50 short essays. It’s not like I became particularly prolific. I’ve always been a writer. I just became serious about learning the tips and tricks for placing a piece in a popular outlet. And that’s what I’m sharing with you.