Tag Archives: Rejection Letters

A Week of Writing: 6/11/18 to 6/17/18

Hey, it’s Monday. Here’s my weekly writer report card for your entertainment/edification/judgment.

Words to Write By

A little something new for these updates. I’m going to start each one with a favorite quote about writing. To kick us off, here’s one by Stephen King.

By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.

― Stephen King

A sterling example of even the greats were/are rejected. I also kind of love the idea of getting rejection letters in the mail. I mean, it’s really no different than getting an email rejection, other than my idea of wallpapering my office with rejection slips will never come to fruition.

The Novel

Still working on my initial read-through and making revisions. I had a little analysis paralysis last week that slowed me down. What’s difficult for me is that I’m struggling to accept that the revision process is going to take as long, if not longer than it took me to write the first draft. I just need to be okay with that because I’ll end up with a better book.

Short Stories

I finished a new flash piece I quite like, and I’ll start sending that one out this week. I also worked on a couple of longer pieces, which are getting closer to done or revised.

Not a lot of submission activity last week.

  • Submissions Sent: 2
  • Rejections: 1
  • Acceptances: 0
  • Publications: 0

All the submission activity this week revolved around the same story. I sent it out once, received a nice personal rejection, revised it a bit, then sent it out again. These two submissions put me at 64 total for the year.

The Blog

Another good week for the ol’ blog.

6/11/18: A Week of Writing: 6/4/10 to 6/10/18

The usual weekly writing update.

6/13/18: Submission Protocol: When to Withdraw

I returned to the always popular subject of withdrawing a story from consideration. This time I shared an order of operations or checklist to consider before sending a withdrawal letter.

6/15/18: Free Flash – Where They Belong

This is a piece of flash fiction I sold to Darkfuse Magazine a few years ago. Unfortunately, Darkfuse closed up shop a while back, and the story is no longer available to read online. So, since the rights to the story have returned to me, I put it up on the blog.

Goals

Keep pushing through my first read of the novel and revising. I (always) want to get more short stories written and submitted as well.

Story Spotlight

This week’s story spotlight is another I published with The Molotov Cocktail. This is a weird one I was sure no one would ever publish, but The Molotov liked it, and I’m grateful for it. Anyway, it’s called “A Man of Many Hats.”

“A Man of Many Hats”

A Week of Writing: 6/4/18 to 6/10/18

Happy Monday. Another week down, another week of positive yardage, more or less.

The Novel

I’m still reading through the first draft of the novel, though I didn’t make much progress last week, mostly because I needed to focus on another project. This week, I’ll continue my read-through and start making some of the first big revisions to the book.

Short Stories

Last week I said I was going to ask my writing group to give a couple of short stories the once over, and I did. I received some really good feedback on two stories I like a lot that just weren’t quite there yet. I know what to do with them now, and hopefully once the revisions are done they’ll find a home.

Another slow week for submissions.

  • Submissions Sent: 2
  • Rejections: 0
  • Acceptances: 0
  • Publications: 0
  • Withdrawal: 1

This is the first week in a long time where I didn’t receive any rejections. I’m okay with that. I did send out two submissions, number 61 and 62 for the year. One is a brand new story on its first submission and the other is an older story I sent to a new market. I also withdrew a story after no response for many months. I’ll send that one out again this week.

Other Projects

One of the reasons I didn’t spend as much time on the novel is I finished up the D&D adventure I was writing for Goodman Games and turned it in. It had been a while since I did any game design, so it was a lot of fun to put that particular hat on again. I’ll reveal a bit more about this project as it gets closer to publication.

The Blog

Okay, last week was a good one for the ol’ blog, and I managed three posts.

6/4/18: A Week of Writing: 5/28/18 to 6/3/18

The usual weekly writing update.

6/6/18: The Final Round Form Rejection

In this post I discussed a type of higher-tier form rejection I called the final round form rejection. It’s a heart-breaker.

6/8/18: One-Hour Flash – Road to Ruin

Another piece of flash fiction jammed out in an hour. This one ties into a novel concept I’ve had kicking around for years.

Goals

Keep reading and revising the novel is goal number one. I’d also like to revise some of the short stories I mentioned above and get them out for submission.

Story Spotlight

This week’s story spotlight is the second piece I published with The Arcanist. Like many of my published flash fiction stories, this one began life as part of a one-hour flash writing exercise (you can see one of the less successful results of those exercises in last week’s blog posts).

“Reunion”

 

The Final Round Form Rejection

It’s been a while since I posted about a new type of rejection letter, mostly because I’ve already written about every type of rejection under the sun. Well, as it turns out, not quite. The rejection letter I want to talk about today is a subspecies of higher-tier form rejection that gives you a little more information about where your story ended up in the publisher’s decision process. Let’s call it the final round form rejection.

Example #1

Very sorry for the delay in getting back to you, but we just made our final decisions today. We are going to have to pass on the story, however. This is the hardest part of the job, having to decline stories that we enjoyed so much, simply because didn’t have the space to include them all. It was a real struggle choosing the final stories. I appreciate your patience, and hope to see submissions from you in the future.

This is one of those rejection you might think is a personal rejection at first blush, but on further review, I think it’s a form rejection. It’s a good form rejection, as all of these final round form rejections are.

Example #2

Thanks so much for letting us consider your story [story title]. While it made it to the final round of consideration, I’m afraid that we chose not to accept it. We had a lot of submissions and there were difficult decisions to be made. Best of luck placing it elsewhere.

This is very clearly a form rejection, but, like the others, the editor lets you know you got real, real close to publication.

Example #3

Thank you again for allowing us to consider your story, but it’s not a match for [anthology].

Your story made it to the final round. It was ranked among the best of the best. We had thousands of submissions from writers all over the world. Even some of our favorites, like your story, didn’t make it through.

Most of the time we don’t move forward with a story because it’s similar to another story in a different word slot. We’re striving for a diversity of sub-genres, writing styles and plot lines, in addition to stories of different lengths.

So that’s the bad news: Your story wasn’t selected for [anthology]. The good news is that there will be many more opportunities to submit to [publisher] in the future. Even though your work was not selected, you are a talented writer. We hope you will consider submitting to our future editions. 

So, I’ll admit, this one fooled me at first, and I thought it was a personal rejection. It isn’t; another writer pointed out that he had received the same rejection. Still, it is a final round form rejection.

Okay, you’ve seen the examples, now let’s talk about what makes these final round form rejections different than your typical higher tier form rejection.

  1. Further Consideration. Final round form rejections are usually preceded by a further consideration letter. Most publishers that use a multi-round decision process are good about letting you know your story has made it past the first round and they’re holding it until they make a decision. With anthologies, its usually a shortlist letter rather than a further consideration letter, but it amounts to the same thing.
  2. Longer wait. Because you’re dealing with a multi-round reading process, and often a ton of other submissions, the wait between the further consideration and the final decision can be longer than usual. In my examples, the first rejection came after 77 days against an average response time of 23 days for the publisher; the second rejection came after 81 days against and average of 10 days; and the final rejection came a 310 days against an average of 269 days.
  3. Closer than usual. With a standard higher-tier form rejection, it’s unclear how close your story made it to publication, and, honestly, with most markets you’d probably get a personal rejection if you got really close. That’s where the final round form rejection is a little different. Despite being a form rejection, you know your story almost made it to publication.
  4. Heart-Breaker. There’s no way around it. The final round form rejection is more disappointing than the typical rejection. It’s hard not to get your hopes up when you receive a further consideration letter and wait a long time for the final decision. Then, to find out you got this close to an acceptance but didn’t make the final cut, well, I won’t lie; that stings a bit. Still, it’s important to remember your story did make it to the final round and beat out hundreds, maybe thousands of other submissions. In other words, you probably have a marketable story on your hands. Case in point, two of the three stories in my examples here went on to acceptances.

Have any thoughts on the final round form rejection? Tell me about them in the comments.

A Week of Writing: 5/28/18 to 6/3/18

New month, new week, more writing and whatnot.

The Novel

I’m about 20,000 words into my first read-through of my horror novel, Late Risers. I let it sit for almost three weeks before I jumped in, and, as expected, my reactions range from “this is pretty good” to “this is objectively terrible.” That’s about par for the course, I think. It should be noted that what I’m doing in this read-through is fixing the problems that are so obvious they can be seen from space. The more nuanced issues, which I’m likely blind to at this point, will be left to skilled and gracious critique partners.

The question I ask myself a lot lately is did I write a good book? Here’s my honest answer. I think I wrote something that could become a good book after a liberal dose of literary elbow grease. I’m satisfied with that and more than willing to put in the work.

Short Stories

I finished a new flash piece this week, another one born of the one-hour flash challenge. It’s a horror/comedy mashup, and I really dig it. It’ll be going out for submission this week. I also had two short stories come back to me after a number of rejections. I really like both stories, and they received good feedback, but they’re not landing, so my writing group is giving them the once over before I send them out again.

A very, very slow week for submissions.

  • Submissions Sent: 0
  • Rejections: 2
  • Acceptances: 0
  • Publications: 0

Yep, my first goose egg in the submissions sent column in a long time. That’s due to a combination of factors that include not having any new stories to send out and a greater focus on other projects (the novel, for example). That’ll change this week, as I have one new story and a couple of reinvigorated pieces ready for submission.

The Blog

Two blog posts last week. This week, I’m again aiming for three and some actual content beyond “Hey, look at all my submissions.”

5/30/18: A Week of Writing: 5/21/18 to 5/27/18

The usual weekly writing update.

6/1/18: Submission Statement: May 2018

My submission scorecard for the month of May.

Goals

The big goal is to continue my first read-through/revision on the novel. I’d like to get another 20,000 words or so.

Story Spotlight

This week it’s not a story, but an interview. Howard Andrew Jones, editor-in-chief of Tales from the Magician’s Skull and a very accomplished editor and writer to boot, interviewed me for his website in a series called Writer Chat. Check it out below.

Writer Chat: Aeryn Rudel

And that, friends, was my week. How was yours?

Submission Statement: May 2018

Well, May was certainly an active month, though not as successful as March and April. Here’s how I did.

May 2018 Report Card

  • Submissions Sent: 14
  • Rejections: 12
  • Acceptances: 1
  • Publications: 0
  • Other: 1

Fourteen submissions in May. That’s solid, and I’ve got sixty for the year. The acceptance gives me six total for 2018, which puts me at an even ten percent acceptance rate. Not bad, but I’d like to get somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen percent by the end of the year. I’ve got a few stories shortlisted I’m waiting to hear about, but those could go either way.

Rejections

I won’t lie; twelve rejections is kind of a lot, but it’s to be expected with the increased submission volume. Here’s how those rejections broke down.

  • Standard Form Rejections: 6
  • Upper-Tier Form Rejections: 5
  • Personal Rejections: 1

Again, a fair amount of “good” rejections, but some of these stories just aren’t landing despite some encouraging notes. I’m gonna take a good hard look at them and see if I can’t put my finger on what might be missing. There’s really nothing new and exciting in these rejections, so instead of showing you yet another form rejection, I think an examination of how long these markets are taking to respond would be more useful.

Rejection Date Sent Date Received Days Out
Rejection 1 28-Feb-18 1-May-18 62
Rejection 2 26-Mar-18 1-May-18 36
Rejection 3 3-May-18 5-May-18 2
Rejection 4 1-May-18 9-May-18 8
Rejection 5 29-Mar-18 11-May-18 43
Rejection 6 6-May-18 13-May-18 7
Rejection 7 5-May-18 20-May-18 15
Rejection 8 11-May-18 21-May-18 10
Rejection 9 14-May-18 21-May-18 7
Rejection 10 30-Apr-18 22-May-18 22
Rejection 11 22-May-18 23-May-18 1
Rejection 12 23-May-18 24-May-18 1

Not too bad. The longest wait was 60 days, and that’s well within acceptable parameters. As you can see, there’s a fair number of single digit responses here, and that’s not uncommon for a lot of pro markets.

Other

The “other” this month was a withdrawal letter. I sent this withdrawal for what is, by far, the most common reason I’ve sent them in the last few years. The market went under and is now defunct. I sent this letter more as a professional courtesy than anything else.

Dear Editors,

I would like to withdraw my stories [story title] and [story title] from consideration at [publisher]. 

Thank you for your time.

Best,

Aeryn Rudel

Did I have to send this letter? Maybe not. The market basically disappeared, and this email bounced back with an “address not found” note. That said, I don’t know what happened on the other end of those submissions, and closing down a publication is obviously not something anyone wants to do. So it’s important to me to stay professional, wish the publisher well, and move on.

Acceptances

One acceptance this month, which broke a minor rejection streak I had going.

Acceptance: Sent 5/22/2018; Accepted 5/25/2018

Thank you for taking the time to submit your story [story title]. I’d be delighted to publish it on [publisher].

I’ve scheduled it for publication on 29 June, if this date changes I will let you know.

Thanks again for submitting your work.

This is my second publication with this particular market. The interesting thing here is that this is a form letter. Yep, form letters aren’t just for rejections. That said, you’ll often get a personal note after the initial form acceptance with requests for things like bios and author photos and/or info about the contract.

And that was my May. Tell me about yours.

A Week of Writing: 5/21/18 to 5/27/18

Running a little behind this week with the holiday weekend and whatnot, but I’m back on track again.

Here’s what I accomplished for the week.

The Novel

So, I had hoped to be neck-deep in my first round of revisions by this point, but another project with a looming deadline pulled me away. Plus, I think I might benefit from a little more distance from the first draft. I’ll start going through the book this week or early next. I did decide one major plot point needed to change, and while that’s going to add some time to my revision, the book will be better for it.

Short Stories

I did manage to work on some short stories last week. I put down about 3,000 words on a brand new one called “The Infinite You.” It’s pure sci-fi, which is not normally my forte, but I’ve been working on expanding into other genres, and I dig the concept for this one. I should finish a first draft this week.

A very busy week for submissions.

  • Submissions Sent: 4
  • Rejections: 5
  • Acceptances: 1
  • Publications: 0

The four submissions I sent last week give me a total of 60 for the year. I did get a fair number of rejections, and three came on the same day. Those rejections were starting to pile up, and I was working on a pretty good streak, but I also got an acceptance last week. So, this week, I’m starting with a clean slate.

Other Projects

The game design project I’ve been working is a Dungeons & Dragons adventure for Goodman Games. I finished the first draft last week and playtested the module with a great group of experienced gamers. They gave me fantastic feedback, and this week I’ll be incorporating that feedback into the manuscript and preparing the final draft.

The Blog

I seem to be stuck on two blog posts a week lately. I had a pretty good run there of three per week, and I’d like to get back to that.

5/21/18: A Week of Writing: 5/14/18 to 5/20/18

Uh, the writing I did for the week before last week.

5/23/18: New Author Starter Kit – Acceptance Prep

The follow-up to my post New Author Starter Kit – Submission Prep, this one deals with the four things you should have ready to go when that first acceptance rolls into your inbox.

Goals

The goals this week is to get a final draft of the adventure for Goodman Games, finish the short story “The Infinite You,” and get cracking on the first revision pass on the novel

Story Spotlight

This week, it’s a story I recently published in a new sword & sorcery magazine called Tales from the Magician’s Skull published by Goodman Games. My story, “Beyond the Block,” was published in the inaugural issue, and it’s a sword & sorcery piece (naturally) with a strong horror element. You can check it out in PDF or print below.

That was my week. How was yours?

A Week of Writing: 5/14/18 to 5/20/18

Another week of writing gone by. Lots of business as usual and one fairly momentous accomplishment.

Here are the details.

The Novel

The first draft is done. The novel is an actual thing that exists somewhere other than my head. There’s still a lot of work to do before it’s fit to be read by other humans, but it’s damn nice to have the first draft in the can. Instead of telling you how much I wrote for the week, I’ll give you the final stats for the first draft:

  • Total Word Count: 92,684
  • Chapters: 32
  • Date Started: 1/24/18
  • Date Finished: 5/14/18

The first draft ended up right about where I thought it would in terms of word count. For a horror novel, between 80,000 and 90,000 words is a solid length, and my guess is that my critique partners will get something around 85,000 words after my first pass. It took me a bit under four months to write the first draft, 111 days to be exact. That’s not too bad, especially since I took two weeks off in the middle to work on another project.

Short Stories

I outlined two more short stories last week, and put about 1,000 words into a first draft on one of them. I stalled out a bit because of another project I’m working on, but I should get back to short stories in the very near future.

Submissions

A couple of submissions and a couple of rejections last week.

  • Submissions Sent: 2
  • Rejections: 2
  • Acceptances: 0
  • Publications: 0

I sent out submissions #55 and #56 for the year. Still on pace to hit my goal of 100 for 2018 (and then some). I’ve got fourteen submissions pending, and four of those have been waiting over 100 days. I hope to hear back from at least one of them this week.

Other Projects

I have a game design project due next month, and I’ve been making good progress on it. Last week I put 8,000 words into it, and I’m close to a first draft. I’m well ahead of my deadline and feeling pretty good about what I’ve got so far.

The Blog

Two blog posts last week. I’m gonna try for three again this week.

5/14/18: A Week of Writing: 5/7/18 to 5/13/18

Business as usual.

5/16/18: New Author Starter Kit – Submission Prep

In this post, I compiled a list of six things I think you should have ready to go before you send your first submission. If you’re new to the submission biz, give it a look. I’ll follow up this week with part two, Acceptance Prep.

Goals

The goals this week are to finish the first draft of my game design project and start the first pass on the first draft of the novel.

Story Spotlight

This week it’s another bit of flash I published with The Molotov Cocktail. This is one is called “Night Walk,” and it took second place in The Molotov’s FlashFuture contest a couple of years ago. It’s a slightly different spin on the undead apocalypse, and, fun fact, if/when I publish a collection of short fiction, Night Walk is one of the front runners for the title of said hypothetical collection.

Read “Night Walk”

That was my week. How was yours?