· rejection

Rejection Phase III Update

October 23, 2009 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions, writing | 4 comments

I got another two short fiction rejections over the last couple months, so I felt compelled to update. The funny thing is that one was from a really major literary magazine that I’d love to get into, and one was from a pretty small zine (that I’d still love to get into), but you’d think the major publication would hurt more, but it’s really the other way around. You know if The New Yorker (not who I submitted to by the way) rejects you it’s easy to blow off, it’s like “well duh, they’re The NEW YORKER, of course they don’t want little ole me.” But the little magazine? C’MON!

Anyway, I’ll be honest it’s pretty frustrating to get short fiction rejections while working on agent revisions for my book. It really undermines my confidence level. So um, I’m just going to pretend this didn’t happen. Nothing to see here folks…carry on…

Updated Stats: 10 out of 11 Rejected, 1 still out. Bah.

Rejection Phase III Update

July 16, 2009 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions | 1 comment

I’ve gotten a couple short fiction rejections recently, so I thought I’d update my stats for those of you keeping score.

Updated Stats: 8 of 11 rejected. 3 still out.

Mumble mumble…I’ll show you literary magazines that don’t want my work, cause someday I’m gonna be famous, that’s right and you’re gonna be begging to print my work and we’ll just see who’s rejecting who then…that’s right…We’ll JUST See! Er…um…did I just say that out loud? Uh, nevermind…and uh, as you were…

Rejection Phase III Update (yes, again)

April 29, 2009 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions, writing | Permalink

Sonofabitch part deux.

That’s right folks. More goddman rejections. At least they’re coming through fast so I can get back to revise and resubmit. Of course, since I’m about to engage in Query Letter Hell, it’s a bit harder on the ego to get short fiction rejections. Let me just show you how that looks:

“Oh woe is me…if nobody even wants my short fiction who the hell is going to want my giant possibly too long novel?! Oh. My. Gods. Someone bring me razor blades!”

Yeah, it’ll look something like that.

For those of you keeping score (you sadists):

Phase III Rejection Stats: 3 of 9 rejected. 6 still out there.

At least five newish stories are still cooking in the old brain…hoping to be born onto paper (or at least finished). I came up with a brilliant idea the other night that I totally stole from something Tina Fey said (not to me obviously…well, maybe she said it to me through the TV…). Anyway, even Adam wants to steal it, that’s how good it is. Now to get it down…no problem. Yeah right.

Phase III Rejection Update

April 23, 2009 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions | 3 comments

Sonofabitch.

Another rejection. I shouldn’t be surprised as this was for a highly competitive contest with significant prize money ($3k for first place). Yet I find myself bummed and pissed regardless. I’ve got another good place to send this particular story though, so it’s good to know it’s free to go out into the world and try again.

Updated Stats: 2 of 8 rejected, 6 still out there.

UPDATE: Ha! Eat that rejection, I’ve moved on from sadness over rejection and within 30 minutes resubmitted this piece elsewhere. HA! Updated UPDATED Stats: 2 of 9 rejected, 7 still out there.

Phase III Rejection Update

April 19, 2009 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions, writing | 2 comments

That’s right, you all know what this image means…we got a rejection letter…yay! (note sarcasm)

The first of the eight that went out has come back with a “thanks but no thanks”. I’m disappointed that this didn’t work out because I continue to really like this story and this is (I think) its third rejection.

I feel like that means I should take it back to the drawing board, but as discussed previously, I was aiming a bit high last year, and even the people that rejected it this year are pretty difficult to crack, so maybe it’s just not a story that can crack that larger market? I think I’ll send it out one more time and if it comes back I’ll send it to revision hell.

On the upside (we must always find an upside) they got back to me very quickly which is always great because then you can put stories back into circulation quickly.

Updated Stats (for those of you keeping score): 1 of 8 rejected, 7 still out there working their magic.

Let Phase II Rejection End, and Phase III Rejection BEGIN!

April 3, 2009 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions | 3 comments

the-torture-continues-header

And with my final Phase II rejection safely in my filing cabinet, we begin Phase III!

I sent out eight pieces over the last few days to various literary magazines and competitions – some harder to crack than others, some that pay and some that just give you the glory of publication (plus author copies!) and so we’ll start the board running with 8 pieces for Phase III in 2009.

Once I get the novel queries out from under me I have another four or five short fiction pieces I hope to work on and get out there, but it will probably be a couple months before I get to that.

The good news is that, whether these pieces go anywhere or not, as of March 2009 I have submitted more pieces than I submitted in all of 2008, so that’s a good place to start! Unemployment does have its benefits I suppose.

So here’s the official status update:

Phase II: The final tally is – 0 for 7 in 2008. A not good year for me and short fiction. Here’s to 2009 kicking 2008’s ass in every possible way.

Phase III: 8 submissions out the door.

Phase II Rejection Update

February 2, 2009 in rejection, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions, writing | 2 comments

rejection1

Ah, thank the gods we are almost to the end of the Phase II (2008 ) short fiction rejections. I’m ready to start with a clean slate!

So you know what this cartoon means – I got another rejection. This one was unfortunate, because last time that I submitted to this highly competitive mag I actually got an encouraging handwritten note on the back of my form rejection. Because of that note, I revised a piece I had been working on that seemed right for them and submitted it almost immediately following my rejection. Alas, there is no hand written note of encouragement on this new rejection. It’s good I’ve learned this lesson though, some of these magazines are out of my league right now. I mean you don’t just go out and get the Olympic gold on your first try right? You have to work your way up winning local, city, state, regional, etc., before you go for the gold, right?

So I’m trying to be optimistic (see “glass half full cartoon“)…Phase III begins shortly as my new 2009 submissions get rounded up and I have at least a dozen pieces both old and new that I want to submit this year already, so wish me luck.

For those keeping score, here are the updated stats:

Updated Phase II Stats: 0 for 6 in Phase II (2008 ) and one piece still out there, trying its best. I should know within the next month or so on that piece.

Updated Overall Stats: 1 for 13 overall since I started submitting in Phase I (2007) with one piece still out there fighting the good fight…

Phase II Rejection Update

November 21, 2008 in craptastic, rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions, writing | Permalink

Double Damnit.

I thought I had this one, I really did. In part because through some quirk of the submission process (it’s online for this particular mag) my submission got switched with another person with my same exact name…but living in Arkansas.

I was able to resend my piece and have the problem corrected, but initially, not understanding what had happened I clicked ont the piece by my name (that wasn’t mine) and accidentally downloaded this other woman’s story. I read some of it (is that bad?) before deleting it respectfully, as I hope she would do with mine, but from what I read I do honestly believe my story to be the superior story. Now I know it’s not like “one of us was getting in and one of us wasn’t” so we could both easily be rejected, but it did buoy my spirits a bit to see another submitter’s piece and to honestly believe mine was the far better of the two (I’m usually pretty hard on myself so I feel pretty confident I’m being at least realistic, if not unbiased). Anyway, so I thought I had a shot…and have now been shot down, again.

The good news (I’m determined to find some good news) is that this piece would be good for another contest I heard about through my writing group, which closes very soon. And having just re-read this piece (while comparing it to the other me from Arkansas’ piece) I’m confident it is solid as is and does not need any editing or clean up. So off it goes, back out into the world to seek my fortune…!

Updated Phase II Stats: 0 for 5 in Phase II with one submission still out there being considered and about six still prepping for submission.

Updated Overall Stats: 1 for 12, overall since I started submitting (with one still out there being considered). I started submitting in winter/spring of 2007. I hope to get another half dozen out there before the end of the year, but man is it a slow process. 1 for 12 is not a bad average overall I guess, but I need to be submitting more and faster and writing faster…it’s all gotta happen faster!

AND a Novel Update: While I don’t talk about my novel much on this site, I just wanted to let you devoted Semi-Finalist readers know that I haven’t forsaken you…I’m on really tight deadlines for my new book draft, and hopefully when I get there I’ll be able to devote a little more time to the blog. My first deadline, to my writer’s group, is actually due today…so prepare youself for a deluge of posts (not really).

Phase II Rejection Update

October 13, 2008 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, short fiction submissions, writing | Permalink

OY! A non-encouraging rejection from a major house, the second rejection I’ve gotten from them. I think I’m just shooting a little too high maybe. Maybe I’m not established enough, maybe I’m not talented enough, maybe my style is not refined enough, maybe the things I write about are not epic enough…but I think I’m not going to submit to this major magazine again until I have some more credits to my name. I suppose you can’t just come running out of the gate aiming for the gold medal or the pulitzer or whatever…well maybe some people can, but not me.

I’m usually pretty good at letting these roll off me, but this one came at an inconvenient time…a time when my defenses were low…and so it seemed to hurt a little bit extra.

I’ve got one more piece out there in this rejection phase…and am still sitting on half a dozen, four of which are almost ready and two of which are not even close but are showing potential…

It’s funny, this magazine that just rejected me, in their most recent issue they had the most amazing short fiction piece I’ve probably ever read – really powerful – the kind of piece that makes you wish you’d written it, and short of that, the kind of piece that makes you wish you had the money to option things, and also the kind of piece that makes you wonder why you think you can compete. But they also had in the same issue a piece that I found to be totally pedestrian. Totally not better than what I have submitted to them in the past (certainly not this time around) so it’s frustrating. I suspect it will always be frustrating…successful or not…though I’d prefer to go with successful…

Updated Stats: 0 for 4 in Phase II with one submission still out there being considered and about six still prepping for submission (soon?).

Phase II Rejection Update

September 30, 2008 in rejection, short fiction, short fiction rejections, writing | 3 comments

Yup. Another one. Like I always say, painful little groups, rejections LOVE to come in painful little groups. This one was from my beloved McSweeney’s (who I’m now 0 for 2 with – not including an award I submitted for and did not win, as expected). This rejection is particularly unfortunate though because this piece is particularly odd and I’m not sure where else it could find a home…maybe Tin House? We’ll see.

Updated Stats: 0 for 3 in Phase II, with two more pieces still out there being considered and between four and six being prepped for submission.

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