Tips for Writers: Don't Give Up!

Last week I wrote that it is important to read—books and literary magazines. We not only learn from reading good work in our chosen genre, but we also learn which publishers are buying the kind of work we’re writing.

While that’s true, excellent work is likely to be welcome anywhere, except for the very specialized genre markets. And you’ll see all kinds of stories in the top magazines. At most, they vary in edginess, but that’s about it. (Read an issue of Ploughshares and then read an issue of Tin House and you’ll get a sense of what I mean.)

But there’s something that a writer won’t be able to learn just from reading a magazine, and that’s taste. A story that one editor rejects may be loved by the next editor who sees it. It might even have been loved if the first editor had seen it a day earlier and was in a better mood.

For example, I just had a story appear in Blackbird. (See “The Replacement Wife.”) This is a terrific magazine—one of the best, if not the best online magazines—and I’ve been sending them work for years. And I’ve been sending this story around for a couple of years, too, collecting some rejections. Not as many rejections as I’ve had for some other stories, but some other good magazines had a chance to take this story and they didn’t. I have no idea why, other than to say that it’s a matter of the editors’ taste.

I’ve got another story coming out in the next issue of Bellevue Literary Review, “A Hole in the Wall.” This story is a favorite of mine and was the second one I wrote in the novel in stories that’s coming out this September from Press 53, What the Zhang Boys Know. It has collected quite a few rejections, and some of those rejections came from some pretty obscure magazines. For whatever reason, though, something about the story appealed to the BLR editors, and something about it did NOT appeal to the editors of those other magazines.

You can spend all the time you want analyzing magazines (and I do, asking myself whether they have a particular slant), but in the end doesn’t it all boil down to taste? Editors publish what they like, and we’re not all going to like the same things. The lesson here is: Don’t give up. If it seems like a story has been rejected too many times, it may just be that it hasn’t yet found the right editor.

"Sorry to be so very tardy!"

Yeah, sure. Whatever.

Actually, I thought the apology hand-printed on the rejection slip was better than nothing, and I was curious to find out just how tardy this university-based journal was.

Sadly, I don't know. I do know that my most recent submission to this magazine was in September 2007, but my database shows that I received a rejection from them in mid-December that year. My previous submission had been in March 2007, but I withdrew that story when it was accepted elsewhere. Conceivably, given the sloppiness of this journal, that December '07 rejection was in reference to the withdrawn submission, since it happens fairly often that editors don't see the withdrawals. Which would mean that this new rejection is a mere 18 months after submission. (The postage doesn't help; it looks like someone added postage onto my SASE to bring it up to date.) Or possibly the rejection was in response to the story I withdrew in July of 2006 when another magazine grabbed that one. Or the story I deemed lost in December 2005 because I had not heard anything from the magazine in over a year, despite queries as to the submission's status. (That one's been published, too.) The bottom line is that this magazine is sloppy or slow or both, and I see no point in submitting to them again. Their loss. The real mystery is why I haven't reached that conclusion before now.

Size Matters - Part III

You may recall a post from a few months ago in which I complained about a rejection slip I received from a literary magazine that was both tiny and badly cut out.(Size Matters) Subsequently, I wrote about the fact that an editor from the magazine that sent me that rejection slip recognized their "handy work" and contacted me to ask for my input in their planned revamping of their form rejection. (Size Matters (continued)) What I didn't mention anywhere that I also recently received a rejection slip that was larger than the one I blogged about but with a cutout job that had to have been done by a blind person. Seriously. I won't submit to that magazine again.

But, now to Part III of this story. The aforementioned editor of the magazine I wrote about mailed to me this week a sample of their new rejection form. It's the first time I've ever received a rejection before I submitted a story! The form, I think, is ideal, given the unfortunate necessity of form rejections. It is on heavier stock, it's a decent size (1/3 of a sheet of paper), includes a basic but polite "no thanks" response, and includes enough space that an editor could write a personal note if he or she wanted to. Thanks for listening and thanks for doing a great job on this seemingly minor matter. I think your contributors will appreciate it.

And, on the subject of rejections, you may be interested in a blog I visited today: Literary Rejections on Display.