Almost Success - The "Mixed Feelings" Thread

I got my first ever personal rejection! From Beneath the Ceaseless Skies: "...While I loved the way the language of the piece itself ..."
So happy!!!! Now to do better next time.

Congratulations! That’s such a beautiful feeling!

I got my first ever personal rejection! From Beneath the Ceaseless Skies: "...While I loved the way the language of the piece itself ..."
So happy!!!! Now to do better next time.

Nice work, BlackInk. You are on the path. Editors do not have time to write personal rejections. When they do so, and they are specific like that, they are trying to help you because they believe you have potential. It's also an invite to submit again. Congratulations!

I also got a personalized rejection from Beneath Ceaseless Skies...

"Although I found the worldbuilding in this piece intriguing, overall I felt the narrative voice read as a bit more distant from Hondo's internality than we subjectively prefer."

I'm assuming the word subjective means it was more of a preference issue.

Writing Theory seems in itself a conundrum. Perhaps it is beyond my ability to rationalize through conscious thinking, and better left to the subconscious to sort out in the act of writing, (If that makes any sense please let me know)...

I did tweak a few things to make the ending sharper. None of the changes had to do with narrative voice. It was submitted and published in Swords and Sorcery Magazine.

https://www.swordsandsorcerymagazine.co ... honor.html

I was more thrilled i think that she mentioned my main character, Hondo, by name, more than anything else. This was my first and (as of yet) only submission to the WotF contest. It received an HM... Working on a new unrelated story now.

I am open to feedback on the issue...

i thank you for your time.....

Thank you, Wulf! I will keep up the work.

Great about your personal rejection from BCS, Tedeschi! I was so impressed they wrote back with specific critiques in my story too.

Congrats on your story being published in Swords and Sorcery! If I have time later today or this week, I'll give your story a read and post back here about narrative voice.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies usually give personal rejections, and I love them for taking that time. It's great they pick out positives as well as offering suggestions. Here's mine from a week or so ago (redacted bits as this is my backup story for WotF, should I not finish my favoured story in time):

"I enjoyed the vivid descriptions of the [redacted] in the opening, and the narrative voice had a subjective quality which made me feel sympathetic towards and intrigued by the narrator. I liked the resolution offered in the end when the narrator was [redacted], but I felt the story could have been longer. I would have liked to experience more of the narrator's life so that I could fully appreciate their character development and enjoy more 'on-screen' interaction between characters."

It was the longest I've had a story at BCS (just over 2 weeks), so I don't know if it was my first to make it through the slush pile or if they're a bit slower than my past experiences at the moment.

Great about your personal rejection from BCS, Tedeschi! I was so impressed they wrote back with specific critiques in my story too.

Congrats on your story being published in Swords and Sorcery! If I have time later today or this week, I'll give your story a read and post back here about narrative voice.

Thank you BlackInk. It is great to see it on the S&S Magazine website. That would be so awesome, perhaps others may benefit from the insight as well.. I genuinely seek to understand the subtleties. That is where the magic happens.

Yes, it is great to get personalized feedback from a venue like BCS.

We had a power outage two days ago and it fried my old 2006 Mac. I lost half my story. The one I was working on for Q4. 18 days worth of hard trudging. I know I should've backed it up. I was on such a roll I didn't think of it. We finally broke down and bought a new computer though. So I guess I ought to look on the bright side. I must say, I have never experienced such a sinking feeling as that particular realization. Couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, felt nauseas. I wasn't sure if I would make another attempt on Q4; but now I've resolved to try. That's all I can do.

I'll be available to critique again after the Sept. 30th deadline, if anyone wants me to read their stuff, give a critique, or specific feedback.

Thank you for your time..... …. … .. .. . . .

Thank you BlackInk. It is great to see it on the S&S Magazine website. That would be so awesome, perhaps others may benefit from the insight as well.. I genuinely seek to understand the subtleties. That is where the magic happens.

Yes, it is great to get personalized feedback from a venue like BCS.

We had a power outage two days ago and it fried my old 2006 Mac. I lost half my story. The one I was working on for Q4. 18 days worth of hard trudging. I know I should've backed it up. I was on such a roll I didn't think of it. We finally broke down and bought a new computer though. So I guess I ought to look on the bright side. I must say, I have never experienced such a sinking feeling as that particular realization. Couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, felt nauseas. I wasn't sure if I would make another attempt on Q4; but now I've resolved to try. That's all I can do.

I'll be available to critique again after the Sept. 30th deadline, if anyone wants me to read their stuff, give a critique, or specific feedback.

Thank you for your time..... …. … .. .. . . .

*Quickly backs up Q4 story*

That is horrible about the power outage. I've been through it before, usually a water spill on my end. It's horrible. The good news is, if you're using the same idea for your rewrite you can consider it like a 2nd draft? I hope you stick with the attempt now that you won't lose it anymore. And if anything else, consider it part of your 1,000,000 bad words you need to get out? Hugs, it's hard to try to spin a silver lining on it.

I did read your story. So I'm not quite sure what the editor meant. Maybe she wanted it to be more 3rd person limited? Given that you have this part in the your story:

The group climbed the hill. The humans turned to watch Hondo drive the wagon back to the city. Little One lifted his head toward the sun. Tears streamed down his face, even as he smiled.

“You know,” Baluga said, “he’s gonna’ drive that wagon straight through the gates, right to the center for everyone to see.”

“Yes. I know,” Little One said. “That’s my Father.”

Or maybe parts where you do things like this in your exposition:

Years ago he had trained one of the assassin sect, a Kwee-Kerchak named Utan Dango. The bastard son of a Chieftain. He could not be gifted any of his sire’s holdings without making enemies of the chief’s legitimate sons. In a twist of fate, Red-Dog was born with the reddish hair of old noble blood. There were so few Skree born red the others were jealous, and extremely wary of him.

Maybe if you had more of Hondo's thoughts and reflections. Why does he want Barter Town? How does he feel after his long trek that the oracle was a waste, telling him it exists so long as people will it to exist. Stuff like that.

You said you were open to feedback so here are some of my reflections on it. Take it all with a grain of salt. You've a publication under your belt and I'm not even sure I have a belt.

For me, parts of the story were unnecessarily confusing. Too many names sometimes and other times not enough. For instance, there is Utan Dango and he's also called Red-Dog. There is Hondo's son and also he's referred to as the Little One. Abalu and mahnu both seem to be the same (abalu are mahnu that have been made slaves). Then there are the skree and ranks within them like the Kwee-Kerchak. For me, it was too much for such a short story. Also it starts off with Hondo climbing up a mountain to see an oracle, seemingly the promise, but then the rest of the story has very little to do with the search of that prophecy. There is still a connection but it's thin and the whole story would be the same without that beginning. The idea that Barter Town represents, as I understood it a place where mahnu and skree could live together in harmony, is a nobel one but for me it fell flat. I understand in the end he lets himself be captured so he can die a warrior but why did he have to go to the arena at all? Why let himself be captured since he mentioned to Utan Dongo :

“They’ll hunt you down,” Utan Dango said. “I have the mark of noble blood.”

“They will see that no blade has touched you.” Hondo flexed. Veins rose under his green-tinted skin as the muscles bulged.

Those were my thoughts. Thank you for sharing the story. I personally enjoy characters that value honor to a fault.

Thanks Blackink ! I'm glad you read it. 'Hondo's Honor' does indeed have a lot of World Building for under 5,000 words. I feel perhaps the story could have been longer, some of the criticism may be why it didn't get further on in the runnings. Objective insight is invaluable. And i thank you sincerely.

They say not to respond to a critique except for the gratitude. So I won't answer your questions here. If you do want to discuss it further PM me. I'd be happy to chat about it, or anything else related to the craft.

Now back to Q4. This one is not so dark. And its only got one language--English. ; )

Just to add to what Alex said, there are a few publications that always take the time to give constructive feedback. Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a good one to submit to because of that. Cast of Wonders is another one. And there's also Cosmic Roots (as long as you ask for feedback in your cover letter, you will get it from them). I'm trying to always include those three in my submission rounds to get feedback directly from the first readers and/or editors, and revise with that in mind, or at least write new stories with the comments in mind as possible weak areas.

I woke this morning to a personal rejection from Black Pedal Publishing. The editor said he liked it, but he's already filled his quota for that word count, feel free to send similar stories with higher wordcount. ...

... I dont have anything else now that fits their genre and wordcount and im juggling too many projects as it is. But it was still a good motivating feeling to know he liked it.

I was getting a bit frustrated by my number of 'almost made it' rejections, but Charlie's highest tier rejection from F&SF with a bit of extra feedback was quite exciting!

"Thank you for giving me a chance to read "[redacted]." Unfortunately, this story didn't win me over -- in part, I thought the ideas needed more room to develop -- and I'm going to pass on it for Fantasy & Science Fiction. But I wish you best of luck finding the right market for it and hope that you'll keep us in mind in the future."

BCS thought this story could be longer too.

My best mixed-feeling rejection this year was from Deep Magic in February--the story made the final round, but didn't quite clear the last hurdle. I got back a lot of wonderful feedback for it, though, including a lot of praise for what they really loved about the story, and a really specific explanation of what kept it from making the cut at the very end. I'm still kicking myself a little bit that I didn't fix some of the issues before I sent it there, but I have my fingers crossed that revisions will help it cross the line in another market.

After a first sweep revision, I resubbed, and got a great chunk of really specific feedback from F&SF, who took some of the feedback I'd acted on from Deep Magic and took it down to an even more exact suggestion of what they thought would turn it into a worthy story. I've followed up on both of their pieces of advice, now, and it's now sitting in its third home, waiting to see what folks may think of it.

(Well, technically its fourth home--its first outing into the world earned it an HM here.)

And its fourth home has declined it--and the feedback from BCS (always a great market for honest and useful feedback) confirmed that it suffered from excessive cutting. The latest version is 30% revised down from that original one, but a couple of the details I decided to cut to try and improve the pacing turned out to be exactly the missing pieces they referred to in their response, without knowing that they were ever there. So I have some un-editing to do, or perhaps a little working to achieve the same effect with new scenes...but either way, I remain optimistic!

I have no idea what its fifth potential home might be, but with luck they'll end up getting the very best version of this story to consider.

(Mildly irked, too, because now the issues that blocked it at Deep Magic, and the ones that blocked it at BCS, are issues I had suspected before submitting in both cases. I may need to learn to listen a little more closely to that quiet inner voice.)

@doctorjest I totally get where you're coming from on this... I've done this dance myself, more than once. Having a critique group can help with this sometimes, because it gives an opportunity to get second opinions before it goes out to magazines, but in the end our own voice is the most important one to listen to--even more important than the editors that tell us how close we got, because one person's "not enough immersion in the POV" is another person's "the protagonist thinks too much". I hope this next round of edits goes well--my fingers are crossed for you.  

Posted by: @disgruntledpeony

@doctorjest I totally get where you're coming from on this... I've done this dance myself, more than once. Having a critique group can help with this sometimes, because it gives an opportunity to get second opinions before it goes out to magazines, but in the end our own voice is the most important one to listen to--even more important than the editors that tell us how close we got, because one person's "not enough immersion in the POV" is another person's "the protagonist thinks too much". I hope this next round of edits goes well--my fingers are crossed for you.  

Yeah, that's something I have always lacked--I rarely use readers for my stories, and I don't have a critique group, and I'm conscious of the fact that it's something that probably hurts rather than helps me in any tangible way.

I had what seemed like a logical reason for all that at first, as I wanted to hone my ability to read and critique my own work well. However, I don't think that's the reason why it continues--for whatever reason, even though I've managed to improve my confidence in many other areas of my life, I still struggle with some kind of social anxiety where this is concerned...sigh. In all fairness, this is probably the next thing I should take time to address as far as my writing is concerned--certainly, if I want this to be able to become a career of any sort, it's a piece of the puzzle I know I'm lacking, and one that I know has helped a number of writers I respect. 

That being said, I have gotten better at that self-critique thing over time, so...maybe? I'm sure there are writers I respect who don't do it too...almost always, there's a prominent, brilliant exception to the rule to be found. But when I think like that, I can feel my inner anxiety just searching for a reason to not have to do it...and I don't really think there's a great reason for me to toss aside a rather excellent tool on that account.

Hi all, I know a rejection is just a rejection no matter what, but I was encouraged to get this one from Analog yesterday. It included the following line:

I rather like your style of writing and suggest that you try us again.

This was a pleasant surprise since I've only gotten the standard "it didn't strike me as quite right for our present needs" before from them, especially as I consider this to be my least science-y SF story (I almost didn't even send it to them for that reason). 

This reads as a higher tier form to me, but I can barely find anything about that online other than a couple of old posts on here calling rejections similar to this one personal. Either way, I'm glad they seem to have liked this one better than the handful of stories I've sent them before. Odd since this was my unrevised R from Q1, and my HM only got a standard form. I guess every market's a bit different. 

Posted by: @ajschultz6

Hi all, I know a rejection is just a rejection no matter what, but I was encouraged to get this one from Analog yesterday. It included the following line:

I rather like your style of writing and suggest that you try us again.

This was a pleasant surprise since I've only gotten the standard "it didn't strike me as quite right for our present needs" before from them, especially as I consider this to be my least science-y SF story (I almost didn't even send it to them for that reason). 

This reads as a higher tier form to me, but I can barely find anything about that online other than a couple of old posts on here calling rejections similar to this one personal. Either way, I'm glad they seem to have liked this one better than the handful of stories I've sent them before. Odd since this was my unrevised R from Q1, and my HM only got a standard form. I guess every market's a bit different. 

R or not, that's impressive. Good job! It definitely reads like it's higher tier, whether form or personal, which means they noticed you. That's good stuff, right there.

Every market is definitely a bit different. I've had a hard time selling any of my finalists or semi-finalists; conversely, I've sold stories at other markets that got flat R's here. Everyone has different preferences, and short story venues are definitely no exception to that rule.  

Two personal rejections in a row from Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Still rejections but with less of a sting.

@pdblake I understand completely.

I feel like I get something out of their specific and constructive rejections, but the rejection itself still sucks.

I've had two more personal rejections today, one from Andromeda Spaceways and one from Abyss and Apex, who looked very close to an acceptance. Both had feedback too so I'll take another look at them before I send them back out.

My SHM certificate arrived today too, so three rejections rolled in glitter lol #

I'll probably feel better about it after some sleep.

Posted by: @pdblake

Two personal rejections in a row from Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Still rejections but with less of a sting.

BCS always sends personal rejections, unless you wrote something too different from what you're looking for (e.g. a science-fiction story).

Charlie Finlay rejected me 13 times back when he was F&SF's editor, two of those rejections were high-tier, meaning that he read the stories all the way to the end. ? 

Posted by: @alexvss

Posted by: @pdblake

Two personal rejections in a row from Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Still rejections but with less of a sting.

BCS always sends personal rejections, unless you wrote something too different from what you're looking for (e.g. a science-fiction story).

 

Charlie Finlay rejected me 13 times back when he was F&SF's editor, two of those rejections were high-tier, meaning that he read the stories all the way to the end. ? 

 

 

I've sent them six stories so far and two of the six rejections came from Scott Andrews, their editor, and going on the comments they got read to the end.  The rest were from an editorial assistant, which I took to be a first reader, though also with comments that indicated they were read all the way through. 

Its nice to know they were read to be honest, and where they think I went wrong. Form rejections often leave me wondering.

I got a rejection today. Comes with the territory. But, the story started in a queue at about 550 and would drop about 100 positions every week. Yesterday, it was at 250. Today, rejected. Am I wrong to suspect they were just full and never even got to my story?

@babooher I can’t speak for every market, but at Apex, first readers are reading the newly submitted stories (for example, queue #750-200) and marking them for the editors. The editor goes through and rejects all the stories that slush readers have passed on, and sends a hold email to those recommended to be read by the editors. The lower queue numbers (200-0) are those in the queue for the editors to read. I would guess—though I cannot guarantee—that this is what happened for your story. 

Posted by: @babooher

I got a rejection today. Comes with the territory. But, the story started in a queue at about 550 and would drop about 100 positions every week. Yesterday, it was at 250. Today, rejected. Am I wrong to suspect they were just full and never even got to my story?

Was this from Apex? I've been stuck at position 260 for days now. That means I'm next ? 

And I'd say that, no, they don't send a rejection because they're full. It may take weeks, even months, but they'll read at least the first paragraph ? 

@RETreasure I can’t speak for every market, but at Apex, first readers are reading the newly submitted stories (for example, queue #750-200) and marking them for the editors. The editor goes through and rejects all the stories that slush readers have passed on, and sends a hold email to those recommended to be read by the editors. The lower queue numbers (200-0) are those in the queue for the editors to read. I would guess—though I cannot guarantee—that this is what happened for your story. 

That's a good explanation. Something similar happens at Uncanny. I think I was stuck at position 300-something when I got rejected the last time.

Do you work/worked at Apex? Does Leslie actually just automatically rejects the ones that the editors passed on, or does she read at least a page? If she doesn't, that would mean that the 30 rejections I got from them were never read by her or Jason. I never got a hold letter in my life.

@alexvss I'm an associate editor at Apex, yes. There's a handy image on our submissions page showing the process toward publication for stories at Apex. We get up to two thousand submissions every month--slush readers have to be very discerning! I assure you that the slush team takes their job seriously, both as curators of the stories passed up to Jason and Lesley and as caretakers of writer's stories. Many stories are agonized over before the reader makes a decision. As much as we'd like them to, the editors simply don't have time to read every story, or even the first page of every story, submitted to the magazine. They'd never get anything else done!

@rschibler Ouch! That confirms all my submissions were never read by them. Makes it all sting a little harder. Now that I know how important hold letters are, I'll post here if I ever receive one (hell, I'll post it in the Success! thread ?).

I remember the good days of C.C. Finlay on F&SF...I'd sub a story at night and, when I'd wake up, there would be a helpful personal rejection in my mailbox already. Well, guess he was superhuman ?  

@rschibler Thank you for a peek behind the curtain. I like learning that kind of thing.

And no, it wasn't Apex. ? 

I miss Charlie too. I don’t know how he did it, but he made a huge impact.