On the writing chat boards I frequent to complain about all my rejections, I’ve noticed a particular way of talking about rejections that needs to be addressed.
We all want to know why a story has been rejected. WHY?? It was beautiful and perfect and you rejected it, why??
And one popular way of phrasing the question is: “I guess [magazine] doesn’t like [description of something in the story.]”
Example: “I guess Clarkesworld doesn’t like gay werewolf detectives!”
Or worse, they’ll put it on the editor: “Neil Clarke must not like Mayan deities in space!”
At heart it’s a humble-brag, sliding in the awesome concept of the story in the mention of the rejection, and that’s okay, but I highly doubt your story was rejected because of the cool concept you just described, and I think it’s a little dangerous to talk of it that way.
No, I’m not calling you out, particularly, person reading now. I promise. I scheduled this blog post 4 months in the future so that it wouldn’t relate to any one person’s comment. NO do not look through your social media history now to figure out what you wrote four months ago!
Ahem.
Why do I feel this is a dangerous justification for rejection? Because every other day there’s some angry douche on twitter talking about how “I can’t sell stories because I’m not a left wing social justice warrior!” or “I’m not a minority!” rants which are… I hope… intuitively obvious in their flawed reasoning. Editors have barely the time to read your story, they aren’t checking who you are. But then the complaint becomes that the content has to be “correct.” “I can’t write what they want because they want liberal pablum!” or “They only want POC heroes and I’m not one and it’s hard to write that!”
The logical fallacy is the same. “My writing is good! It must have been some petty reason that casts me as a victim that cost this story its rightful place!”
I’m not saying the douches will stop if we do, but… some of the same self-serving delusion is happening, and I don’t want us to be like that.
Chances are good it wasn’t the content of the story that got it rejected, but how well it was executed, and I know that hurts even to think. Or it was the third gay werewolf they saw that week. Or it was 4000 words and they only have budget for another 3000 words. Publication is fraught with a thousand million tiny, subjective and impersonal choices.
Don’t put reasons in the editor’s mouth. If they had a reason they wanted to share with you, it would have been in the rejection letter.
(And trust me, when they do give you reasons, you’ll still complain. I do. What did you mean, my ending was flat?? You wanted more character? I’ll give you more character… grrr… )
Usually, you aren’t given any reason why a story is rejected. There are so many submissions and so little time an editor can devote to each one. They aren’t checking some list of “must includes”. No one’s got time for that! They are probably not even reading your name.
(Notable exception: if the guidelines say “we do not accept werewolf stories” they are always going to reject that werewolf story, probably from the moment they realize it is one. It might be such a genre-shattering werewolf story that would change anyone’s mind about werewolf stories themselves, but the editor has no time and you just made this an easy story to not read all the way through. So yeah, if the guidelines say it, that is true, they won’t take that kind of story.)
It’s frustrating, knowing that your story could be rejected for random reasons, capricious ones. Maybe that editor just couldn’t take another story that month! You can never know.
But please, stop blaming the concept of the story.
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