Lame Responses to Rejected Stories

Posted by: jordan
in Uncategorized
22
Sep
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Oh man, I just got an e-mail from an author we rejected from EDF because of a dead narrator. First, we get TONS of dead narrator pieces from beginning authors and it’s almost always a cop out. If you’re a master writer, you can do this… but this guy wasn’t.

So what does he write back to us? “My friends like it, so screw you!”

Wow. And I bet his Mom thinks he’s cool too.

Sometimes I wanna go all Mamatas on these guys, but then I think… what’s the point? Guys like this don’t wanna learn. They know it all already…

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21 Comments(+Add)

1   Bill Ward    http://billwardwriter.com/
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm

Oh, the hilarity. I’ll never forget my own magical months as slush reader, talk about losing your faith in humanity . . .

And I’m happy I can now tell everyone that Jordan Lapp said I was a master writer (should that be capitalized? hmmm) since I have managed to sell him a dead narrator story.

2   silviamg    
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:59 pm

Fun times!

3   Christopher Kastensmidt    
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:18 pm

No reply is without a doubt the best reply in a case like that.

4   Oso    http://osomuerte.wordpress.com
September 22nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm

Ah, self delusion. Maybe he’ll get a clue one day…and either start listening or quit writing. Either would be good.

Don’t get me wrong, if the guy wants to write for real, there’s only one choice, right?

5   Brian Dolton    http://tchernabyelo'livejournal.com
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:08 am

Heh. Clearly, his friends tell him they like it because they know he has a short temper and will go off in a huff if they say anything else.

He should try showing it to strangers and see if they like it… and oh! Guess what! He did that… and you didn’t. And he stormed off in a huff.

Case closed.

6   jordan    http://www.everydayfiction.com
September 24th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

@Bill We both know how I feel about your writing. Can’t wait for the novel, buddy.

@everyone I ended up sending him a note suggesting that perhaps his friends were biased, but that he was free to disregard our opinions.

He wrote back, quite politely, which was a welcome surprise.

7   Andrew Cooper    
September 28th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

You made me giggle, Jordan.

8   Ty    http://tyjohnston.blogspot.com
September 28th, 2009 at 5:27 pm

Mwahahahahahahahaha! Having been one of those who submitted a dead narrator story (accidentally … I swear), I had more than a good chuckle at this.

9   jordan    http://www.everydayfiction.com
September 28th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

Hey, a great writer can break any rule they want. I don’t consider myself a great writer, so I stick pretty close to the rulebook…. which is a good decision most of the time.

10   Andrew Cooper    http://www.andrewjcooper.wordpress.com
September 28th, 2009 at 6:19 pm

This makes me want to be a slush reader. If I join your slush team, will you inform me of all the responses to rejections?

11   jordan    http://www.everydayfiction.com
September 29th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

Andrew,

We don’t get that many indignant responses. Generally, we try to phrase our rejections as kindly as possible without lying to them.

We’ve only gotten maybe 6 or so of these in 2 years of operations (2000 stories slushed!). My favourite was a writer who told us to “bask in our Amerikan darkness”. It’s clever, see, cause he spelled “American” with a “k”.

And we’re not even American!!! Crazy fish.

12   silviamg    
September 30th, 2009 at 10:13 am

Oh, yeah. That happened to us too. Someone said we sucked and talked about how we were an American pub. But Innsmouth Free Press is a Canadian zine. The joke is on you my friend!

13   Michael "Master Writer" Ehart    
September 30th, 2009 at 12:17 pm

Hey, me too! I sold not only sold Jordan a story where the narrator was dead, everyone else in the story was dead too!
So from now on you peons may refer to me as Michael “Master Writer” Ehart :)

14   jordan    http://www.everydayfiction.com
September 30th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

@Michael. Damn you and your great stories!!! I had rules, dammit, and now I have >exceptions< . ;)

This is like when I said we’d never accept another werewolf piece, and Mike Turner took that as a personal challenge. Now we’re podcasting Silver Shells, which is an amazing…werewolf story.

15   jordan    http://www.everydayfiction.com
September 30th, 2009 at 12:32 pm

@silvia I was really interested in your question in your interview of me at Innsmouth: “Do you think that speculative writing from Canada and the U.S. are different? How?”. I couldn’t think of how they were, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the same question.

16   silviamg    
September 30th, 2009 at 7:28 pm

Oh, it’s something very subjective. I find Canadian stories tend to stray towards more unexpected territory and subject matter. The boundaries seem a bit more flexible than in American spec writing.

Compare say Weird Tales and On Spec and there is a difference in the flavour of it (mmm … bacon).

Of course, I have no scientific evidence but reading a large number of Tesseracts stories has pointed me towards that conclusion.

17   Jordan Lapp    http://www.jordanlapp.com/withoutreallytrying
October 1st, 2009 at 1:43 pm

Well, those are two very different magazines.

There might be a difference in short ficiton, but in novels? Hard to say, since nearly every major publisher is based in New York, anyway.

18   silviamg    
October 1st, 2009 at 2:34 pm

This has nothing to do with Canadian versus American spec writing, but I love that cat icon!

19   Brad R. Torgersen    http://home.comcast.net/~brad.r.torgersen/
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:14 pm

Rejections are like hit men.

Nothing personal. It’s just business.

I think a lot of aspirant writers don’t enter the arena with the correct frame of mind. You have to come into this game with your shield up and your helmet on. Let the rejections roll off. Don’t take it personally. Don’t let it get under your skin.

Same rules apply in the military. Time and again at different stages I’ve seen people around me in the U.S. Army let things — people — get under their skin. It never turns out well.

Best thing to do is just file the rejection and move on. Firing back an angry response is about 0.00% likely to yield a sale.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an entry-level ABC 123 class for aspirants, educating them to this reality. So lots of aspirants come to the table with the wrong attitude and get their feelings hurt too quickly, and then it sort of all goes downhill from there.

20   jordan    http://www.everydayfiction.com
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:22 pm

@silvia Picture that fish as a novel contract and me as the cat ;)

@brad I think it’s part of the “internet age”. I can’t imagine anyone taking the trouble to fire back an angry “letter”. People need to think before pressing the send button in every scenario, but especially when responding to a rejection letter.

21   Bernard S. Jansen    http://surgebin.blogspot.com
January 17th, 2010 at 4:51 pm

I think that in some cases rejection of a piece for publication is received as rejection of the author both as a person and as a writer generally. In these cases the writer is looking for validation – not of their work as such – but of themselves and their life. They will feel, “If you don’t publish my piece and validate my life you will become my enemy.”

One Trackback/Ping

  1. Teapot in a Tempest - Without Really Trying    Sep 30 2009 / 9am:

    [...] wrote a posting called “Lame Responses to Rejected Stories” a couple of days that has caused way more angst than I expected from a 102 word [...]

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