I received two email rejections yesterday from pretty high-profile spec-fic magazines and no one can quite understand why I’m not depressed. Okay, there were all those choclit patches, but the main reason was that the rejections fell into the category of ‘good’ rejections. There was no need for devastation, weeping, wailing, howling and throwing myself onto the eighteenth-century fainting couch for a period of melodrama (although I am fond of doing that). The fact is that there’s a hierarchy of rejections. Yes, there are good rejections, Virginia! I choose to break rejection letters down into three categories (because I just like things in threes).
The Bad Rejection (Let’s call it ‘Puce’)
The bad rejection can be a sign of a few things. You’ve sent your hearts and flowers doctors’n’nurses love story to, oh, say an anthology in the spirit of Clive Barker. Unless your story involves the nurses removing the doctors’ skin, you’ve probably chosen unwisely (and really need to learn to read submission guidelines very carefully). Chances are you may well get a bad rejection from an overworked, underpaid, very tired and impatient editor. In this case: suck it up coz you were dumb and need to make sure you research your markets properly.
Possibly the editor has already filled the magazine/anthology and is simply not accepting any more submissions. Or you’ve missed the deadline. Or your story sucked (a sad possibility). Or the story was just not quite right for the market. Or they managed to fill all the spots with stories from Clive Barker, China Miéville, Kelly Link, Karen Russell – you get the picture.
Rejections should never say “Please hand in your pencil/pen/quill/stylus/laptop at the door and never, ever write again”. Alas, the bad rejection may well just be rude or mean. Maybe you got someone on a bad day – you didn’t do anything wrong, you just got caught in the jet stream of an editor’s bad mood (donut shipment didn’t arrive; failure of a project; pet death, etc – you don’t know what’s happening in other people’s lives, so keep a little perspective). I once got a rejection letter from the editor of a leading spec-fic magazine that did not mention my story at all, but did offer quite a lot of personal abuse to me because I had provided an email address for notification of rejection/acceptance in order to save trees. This editor was so moved/offended/drunk that he typed this rejection letter personally, used his own envelope, schlepped to the post office, paid for the stamps himself, and roundly abused me for forcing him to do this. Have I ever submitted to that magazine again? Will I ever submit there again? If asked/begged for a story by that magazine will I ever say “Yes”? The answer to all three questions starts with an N.
The Fair to Middling Rejection (Let’s call it Peach)
This is your standard “thanks but no thanks” letter. It doesn’t say you’re a bad writer. It just says not this story, not now. Maybe not ever. Maybe you’ve chosen the wrong market. Maybe you need to revisit the story and do a bit of flensing. And once again, some of the reasons listed in the bad rejection section may apply.
The Fantabulous Rejection (Let’s call it Fuchsia)
A rejection letter that says “Okay, not this story, but please send another” translates as “this particular story is not for us, but we like your style and ability so much that we want to see something else from you – yes, you! Yes, this is an invitation to YOU. And you know what? This shows we have noticed your work; we will remember your name and, with any luck, you will now get out of the slush pile a little faster.” These are all good things, dear reader-writer; these are not cause for depression.
How Many is Too Many?
How long is a piece of string? If a tree falls in the forest does anyone hear it? Why are people letting Steve Martin make more Pink Panther movies when he is far more talented than that drivel? Questions with either no answer or an infinite variety of answers, all of which may be right, wrong or a little of both. How much persistence do you have? Because the best friend of talent is persistence. Personally, I give a story twenty rejections – it’s an arbitrarily chosen number. It gives me time to get a story across a variety of markets (from the top down as per advice from the very wise Jeff VanderMeer http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/). If it gets the boot from all twenty then I look at re-writing or re-purposing the story. Sometimes the rejection letters help with this because sometimes you get that rarest of things: the rejection letter with feedback telling you why the story was not right for them. These are rare because editors of magazines, journals, anthologies, etc, don’t generally have time to provide feedback on every story they get. Nor should they have to do so. You want feedback? Join a writing group.
The main thing to remember is this: your writing is not you. At the beginning of your career especially, a rejection feels like someone saying your baby is ugly. You may well be tempted to wander around the house doing an Agnes Skinner impersonation: “A dagger! A dagger through my heart!” The greatest danger is reading a rejection letter and only picking out the negative bits and then translating that negative part into self-loathing – “I’m a bad writer! My stories suck! I’ll never make it! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” Okay, you get to do this for fifteen minutes – time yourself, then move on. Go back to writing. Send the story straight back out.
In some cases, there are bad writers and their stories do indeed suck. But you need to get a really thick skin in this business in order to survive. That doesn’t mean becoming delusional (“No one knows anything except me! I listen to no one – my words are golden, GOLDEN, I tell ye!”), but it does mean learning to (a) get over yourself – this is not the end of the world (it may just feel like it for a while) and (b) take things for what they are. Yes, it feels like an Epic Fail – but tomorrow is another day.
And a golden rule? Do not reply to a rejection unless it is to say “Thank you for taking the time to consider my work”. “Thank you” goes a long, long way. Don’t argue with the rejection. Don’t try to get the editor to reconsider. Don’t write back rejecting the rejection. Don’t blog about the rejection, naming and vilifying the editor – if you’re going to do that, then just save some time and shoot yourself in the foot right now (off you go, we’ll wait). If you want to see something we all dream about doing –
watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS1NOXWVWgo – live vicariously through Bernard Black. Or read Neil Gaiman’s advice here http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/02/on-writing.asp. My favourite part is “The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering “Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!” and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there’s nothing left to write.”
Remember that every writer at some point suffers rejection – you’re not alone.
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