…And you just can’t be everyone’s type.
For another installment of our rejection letter series, here’s an excerpt from an essay by Terrence Cheng, author of Sons of Heaven (2002), and Deep in the Mountains (2007). I’d recommend reading the entire (short) essay on Glimmer Train‘s website, which is worth it just for the “thanks but…” list of feedback received. As always, if you have a rejection letter story that you’d like to share on our blog, send me an email.
We don’t do this in other facets of our lives, in which we are far more pragmatic and make decisions based on evidence. We don’t put ourselves at risk when we know that odds are we are going to get hurt.
So why do we do it?
Because we are in love, and looking for those with whom we can share that love.
Which is why rejection, particularly in your love life, is good training for being a writer. Because your work, if it’s true, is you…. Your work is everything you want and need to make things right in the world—it’s what sets you apart from the rest, what makes you believe that all the devotion, dedication, and the grueling brutal daily grind to produce actually means something.
Writing and love are both leaps into the unknown, acts of discipline as much as they are acts of faith. If you are not in love with writing then you shouldn’t write, because without love, you won’t be able to take it. (And I didn’t say in love with your writing—I said in love with writing. There’s a difference.)
Full Disclosure: Although I haven’t read Cheng’s novels, I have received a couple rejections from Glimmer Train myself. Which were not letters at all, but form emails.
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“Which is why rejection, particularly in your love life, is good training for being a writer.”
I’ve never felt this to be true. I’ve never felt hurt by a rejection from a literary magazine. I’ve never had any emotional reaction at all, except when I get useful feedback (which I have always gotten from my TNQ rejection letters–I keep trying even though I know my work isn’t usually a good fit for you guys). It’s always seemed to me like just part of the job.
Rejection in my love life leaves me crippled for months, sometimes years, by comparison. Maybe I’ve wired strangely?
I’ve received rejections letters, and sure, I am not super happy to see my short stories rejected. But I don’t take it personally. These publications get thousands of stories from writers who are wayyy more experienced than me. All I can do is keep learning and writing. That’s my role: write, rewrite and send the stories out. That’s the only part of this whole process that I have any control over.
So far, the most valuable rejection letter I’ve received is from one literary publication, where the reader took the time to critique it, and give me feedback and suggestions. This person showed me where that story’s “mechanics” were not working consistently. I think that story has merit, so I’ll be retooling it and sending it out again.
Subject to the moderator’s permission, could writers and editors give me their opinion here: After I rewrite it, do I keep the same story title, or should I rename it, so editors will know it has changed since they had previously read it?
Alan, you raise an excellent question. Kim, the editor, is out of the office, but I’m hoping she will address this question in a future post. In the meantime, I’ll take a stab at it, as a former TNQ fiction editor. Obviously, I can’t speak for any other mag, but at TNQ, what you should do with your story, once you’ve considered our feedback and made changes, really comes down to the exact wording of our feedback, which we’re very careful about. If we specifically say, please re-send your story with these revisions, then what you need to do is keep the same title and mention in your cover letter that you’ve revised it as requested by the editor.
If, on the other hand, we give you some constructive suggestions, but don’t specifically ask you to re-send, what you need to do is take our suggestions under consideration (or not!) then try it on another magazine, or else let some time pass before resending it our way so that it will feel ‘new’ to our editors again the next time they read it, so that their second reading isn’t clouded by that vague ‘hey…I’ve read this before’ feeling, which rarely leads to a ‘yes’!.
In that latter case, my suggestion is that you mention in your cover letter that you’ve sent a version of this story some time ago but have worked on it since then, because otherwise, the person entering your story in our database will probably assume you’re sending it in error, that the editors already read it, and will write to ask you about that.
It’s actually very rare for us to specifically request revised versions. Why? Well, that’s also a subject for a future post, as this comment is far long enough
Hope this helps!
Very helpful, thanks Rosalynn. In my case, the story reader had made observations, but had not asked to see the story again. I am at a writing level where any constructive criticism is worth its weight in gold, ha ha.
Over time, I had submitted this story to a few publications, without received any comments on it. That said, it sounds like the best thing to do would be to rewrite it, put it aside for awhile, then resubmit it with an explanation.
I know what you mean about the ” ‘hey…I’ve read this before’ feeling”. I wouldn’t want that associated with any of my submissions.