Oh, and.

[flexagon]

My best short story, you know, the one that's the right length and tightness and quality to publish, just got rejected again with another note that leaves me with no reason to believe it actually got read.

I know how I'm going to make my fortune. I'm going to start making a notepad of rejection notes with a blank at the top for a story name. It will also have checkboxed items such as "Theme not appropriate for this publication", "spelling and grammar not up to standard", "characterization needs work", "too short", "too long", etc. Then people could take TWENTY FUCKING SECONDS out of their lives to check a couple of boxes after reading a story, and people like me would have a reason to not just put their story on their website already.

This game gets old fast.

Comments

[apfelsingail.livejournal.com]

That SUCKS. *hugs* I suspect that reading submissions often gets passed off to the unpaid interns, many of whom are bitter, rejected writers. Keep sending it out, and sooner or later, you'll get a nibble. And remember that you can resell it over the years, as long as you don't give anyone exclusive rights.

[flexagon]

I used to read slush for a magazine, actually. I never, ever, had nothing at all to say, though I wasn't the one actually sending the responses back to the people so who knows if my comments ever got through.

Eh, well, thanks for the encouragement. :)