McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Sweet Rejection...
Paynesgrey:
--- Quote from: the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh on February 06, 2013, 09:09:51 PM ---Do I smell the free-will argument insinuating its invidious way even here ?
The thing I most wish I had thought of, myself, in re submitting things to editors, is the person who sent their manuscript a birthday card when it had been in slushpile a year; I heard about it from the editor in question who was tickled into looking at the thing shortly thereafter.
..also, I wish I could write short fiction. Or rather, I wish I could write halfway decent short fiction in any less time than it takes to complete a first draft of a novel. I greatly respect people who can write a thousand-word story in the same sort of timescale it takes to write a thousand-word chapter, but that's not a skill I have.
--- End quote ---
Pure, utter rationalization I'm afraid. ;D
The birthday card is brilliant. I'll put that on the list of things I wish I'd thought of, and hope to never need to do. I'm actually doing submissions based on turn-around time rather than rates because the single thing I need most is feedback.
Short fiction is a pain. I have trouble telling anything meaningful in less than four or 5,000 words. I get that it's intended to be conceptual, crisp, etc... but my love is in worldbuilding, and character-driven material. Something which, at least for me, takes a bit more space than the typical 3 or 4K limit allows.
Starbeam:
--- Quote from: Paynesgrey on February 03, 2013, 05:04:57 PM ---So the first short I've fed into the Submission Machine has now garnered two "Near Miss" rejections. On one hand it sucks, but on the other hand, only about 6% of Clarke's World submissions get the "Near Miss" letter. So at least I know I'm on the right track. What I'd truly love to know is if there was a technical issue, not quite the content they were looking for, or if there were simply too many other stories in the batch that struck chord with the editorial staff.
Still, it's feedback of sorts, which is better than none. ;)
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Something to consider--your piece might've simply been too long for the space they had available. I've seen the suggestion that to get published in a magazine--write shorter. Because if they have only so much space, and the editor has to choose between a longer piece by a well-known author or by an unknown, they're going to go for the well-known author.
Paynesgrey:
--- Quote from: Starbeam on February 07, 2013, 02:03:21 AM ---Something to consider--your piece might've simply been too long for the space they had available. I've seen the suggestion that to get published in a magazine--write shorter. Because if they have only so much space, and the editor has to choose between a longer piece by a well-known author or by an unknown, they're going to go for the well-known author.
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Oh, I'm a fiend with word counts. Many will auto-reject after just glancing at the word count, after all.
The first one had a 3.5K limit, and I was meticulous in staying under. After I got it back (with a very encouraging, personal rejection) I put another five or six hundred words that it really needed and sent it to Clarkesworld, where it fell into the "preferred" zone. (I've got heaps of 10K that I'm saving for e-zines specifically looking for novella length stuff.) So in this case, I'm pretty sure it wasn't word count. Either a small poisong pill, like a clunkety spot that soured an otherwise printable story, or it simply didn't quite intersect with what they were looking for.
Darkshore:
I've been in the same boat for a while now. So far I've amassed three personal rejections from professional markets. At least my stories were good enough to merit reading completely and giving me compliments, but they still just aren't quite there yet.
Paynesgrey:
--- Quote from: Darkshore on February 07, 2013, 05:42:42 AM ---I've been in the same boat for a while now. So far I've amassed three personal rejections from professional markets. At least my stories were good enough to merit reading completely and giving me compliments, but they still just aren't quite there yet.
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Unless they actually told you that xyz was a problem, quality might not be an issue. It could be you're simply not hitting exactly what they prefer in style, tone, or theme. And those things can change issue to issue in some cases. Or you could have the bad luck of some pure, highest quality competition hitting at the same time.
Not to say there isn't always room for polish and improvement, but don't automatically consider it a pure quality issue.
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