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My very first rejection letter!
How exciting!
"An Old-Fashioned Chat" got turned down by F&SF, in record time. I put it in the mail less than two weeks ago. Wow!
Now I have to decide who I'm going to send it to for rejection next. Hmm. Analog, I think; I haven't sent them anything yet. I'm glad "Chat" got rejected first; "She's Having a Baby" is quite short, and accordingly a little harder to find a market for. At 3,000 words, "Chat" ends up right in the middle of most magazines' "usual range" for story length.
The rejection letter was a bit less formal, and less form-letter-ish, than I expected. It was signed, for example (not stamped) by the editorial assistant, and it had the name of my story in it. Not that this is any more personal than a standard mass-mailing, but I expected, you know, a preprinted "Thank you for your submission. It does not suit our needs at this time" snatched from the stack and stuffed into an envelope. I guess they don't have the kind of volume of submissions that they need to be *that* impersonal.
I'm half-tempted to scan in the rejection to show. :) I'm really tempted to send a different story to F&SF, just to see if I get the same rejection letter.
I'll probably send F&SF another story anyway. "She's Having a Baby", when it gets rejected by Asimov's, maybe. Or if I ever do write something new, I'll send it. If Chang Juan gets her own short story, it'd be fantasy, so I'd likely send it to F&SF 'cause they're the only magazine I know offhand that publishes fantasy. :)
I wonder how long the process of being rejected will continue to amuse me? I have these two big boxes of 9x12 and 10x13 envelopes (for mailing submissions out flat -- the larger envelope so that I don't have to fold the smaller SASE). And a whole bunch of stamps. And I know what the postage cost for mailing "Chat" is ($1.06 for the mailer, $0.83 for the SASE). All I have to do is a new cover letter, mailing labels, and I'm set. I really should buy a new printer so I can do the mailing labels and cover letters at home.
I've been wanting to mail out another story anyway. And now I have one to send! :)
"An Old-Fashioned Chat" got turned down by F&SF, in record time. I put it in the mail less than two weeks ago. Wow!
Now I have to decide who I'm going to send it to for rejection next. Hmm. Analog, I think; I haven't sent them anything yet. I'm glad "Chat" got rejected first; "She's Having a Baby" is quite short, and accordingly a little harder to find a market for. At 3,000 words, "Chat" ends up right in the middle of most magazines' "usual range" for story length.
The rejection letter was a bit less formal, and less form-letter-ish, than I expected. It was signed, for example (not stamped) by the editorial assistant, and it had the name of my story in it. Not that this is any more personal than a standard mass-mailing, but I expected, you know, a preprinted "Thank you for your submission. It does not suit our needs at this time" snatched from the stack and stuffed into an envelope. I guess they don't have the kind of volume of submissions that they need to be *that* impersonal.
I'm half-tempted to scan in the rejection to show. :) I'm really tempted to send a different story to F&SF, just to see if I get the same rejection letter.
I'll probably send F&SF another story anyway. "She's Having a Baby", when it gets rejected by Asimov's, maybe. Or if I ever do write something new, I'll send it. If Chang Juan gets her own short story, it'd be fantasy, so I'd likely send it to F&SF 'cause they're the only magazine I know offhand that publishes fantasy. :)
I wonder how long the process of being rejected will continue to amuse me? I have these two big boxes of 9x12 and 10x13 envelopes (for mailing submissions out flat -- the larger envelope so that I don't have to fold the smaller SASE). And a whole bunch of stamps. And I know what the postage cost for mailing "Chat" is ($1.06 for the mailer, $0.83 for the SASE). All I have to do is a new cover letter, mailing labels, and I'm set. I really should buy a new printer so I can do the mailing labels and cover letters at home.
I've been wanting to mail out another story anyway. And now I have one to send! :)
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One of these days I really must write another short story and kick it out the door!
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It really doesn't bother me that the story got rejected. I think after my fifth or sixth rejection, I'll start to feel discouraged. But one? Nah. It's all still new and exciting. :)
What disappoints me much more is that I haven't written a new short story in the two weeks since I sent "Chat" and "Baby" out. I want to have all kinds of balls in the air, before I lose all my momentum in this and give up in disgust. Of course, I have been working on "Prophecy" and "Silver Scales", not to mention the Just Trust Me game, and .... uh ... maybe I should just cut myself some slack. :)
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So I'm not discouraged yet. Now, once Analog, F&SF, and Asimov's have all rejected a couple of my stories, then I'll probably be discouraged. Which is not to say I'll give up. But I expect to be a bit disheartened by then.
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Hey, you've got to start somewhere. :-)
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I'm fussing with a World Tree story -- very much not Sythyry's -- and hoping to send it out. I seem incapable of writing short, though. Do you know what size of stories magazines are generally willing to tolerate?
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The webzines (the ones that will pay you, anyway) seem more finicky about their upper bounds, probably because (a) longer=more expensive, and the webzines are more cash-strapped, plus (b) takes longer to read, and sinxe webzines take electronic submissions, they get a lot more of them than print magazines, I suspect.
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Then again, I've never submitted anything for publication. It was always by accident for me.
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Anyway, I will be happy to be surprised by Asimov's. But I'm not gonna be particularly surprised or disappointed if they turn me down. :)