Anatomy of a great acceptance letter.

Oh, right...ALL acceptance letters are great! And guess what? I just got another one last night :).

My short story "The Gift" will be published in Digital Dragon, an online, Christian-friendly magazine. Yay! I'm so excited.

And actually, not all acceptance letters are the same. Sometimes they are much like the form rejection letters, but the forminess of them isn't quite the bother when the answer is "yes." The letter I got last night, though, went the step above and included some really nice comments about the story--here's what the editor said:

Thank you for your submission of The Gift. We are happy to inform you that your piece has been accepted for our November issue of Digital Dragon Magazine.

I really enjoyed your story, I could truly feel the characters, and maybe even shed a tear. We are happy to introduce our readers to your work.

What is so super-cool about this is that I have another story due to come out in November in Mindflights--"The Artist"--and both stories are off-shoots from my novels. They're sort of back-story, events that happened years before the time frame of the novels themselves. They're nothing that will spoil the plots of the novels once they're published (someday....), but they actually do involve events that are integral to the plots.

I've posted before about writing short stories based on your novel characters to help get a better grip on their histories and personalities. And that is exactly where these stories came from.

I'll post as soon as they are online. In the meantime, you can always check out the current stories at Mindflights and Digital Dragon.

Anatomy of a great rejection letter.

I got a rejection letter today. This is what it said:

Thank you for sending us "(my story named here)". I've reviewed the story and decided not to purchase it. It was a little too much on the horror
fantasy side for us, we generally like to see horror stories that are
more grounded in the real world. You may want to try submitting it to
(named their sister mag).

Thanks for submitting, and I hope my comments have been at least a
tiny bit helpful.

THIS is the kind of rejection you want to get from a magazine. The editor actually said he READ the thing and commented on the specific reasons it didn't work for him. Nothing to indicate that my writing was the problem (yay!). And he ended it with an encouraging statement.

Now some magazines will tell you when there is a problem with the writing, and that is a good thing, too. What that generally means is that the problem is something fixable. I had a magazine tell me once that the pacing of my story was off. I reread it and cut some unnecessary passages. Problem fixed, and soon the story sold!

Any time you get a letter like this, take the comments to heart. And save the letter! This kind of letter is a step away from acceptance. It says that your writing was worth some time to the editor, and most editors are outrageously busy, so time is very valuable to them.

I'm of course bummed that the story wasn't accepted. And to be honest, I've already tried the sister mag. They didn't send a personal note, but their submissions state specifically that they don't take much dark fantasy, so I wasn't at all surprised.

Anyway, you have to keep plugging away when you get rejections. You may go through gobs of them, but you only need ONE acceptance. It's kinda like the old saying about finding something in the last place you look :).

Waiting--the Other Side

OK, so there's the other side of waiting, which is the getting of what you've been waiting for--a response from the magazine/agent/publisher you have submitted to. Sometimes that response is good, and sometimes it's a rejection.

There are different types of rejections. If you're lucky, you get a letter with a personal note that specifies a particular element of your story/book the editor/agent feels needs work or makes your piece incompatible with them. I've gotten a few of those, and it's actually a good feeling. It lets you know the editor/agent took the time to read your work, and that they feel it has enough merit to be worth a few minutes of their time. Sometimes (oh, happy dance) there may even be an offer to look at the work again if you revise.

At the other end of the spectrum is what I call the "ignore rejection." An agent/editor simply never responds and you are supposed to take that as "no." Fine, I can understand this to a point. And some agents/editors at least post something like, "If you have not received a response from us within 12 weeks assume we are not interested." Not the most polite way of doing things in my opinion, but such is life. What I CANNOT stand, however, is when they do that but don't give a time limit. Oh, look, the sun has super-novaed--I suppose I can now safely assume they're not interested...

In between these two forms of rejection is what is known as the form letter. (Ah, I see from your expression you're familiar with this--hee, hee.) I've received my share of these, of course. Some are more politely written than others, and could ALMOST be taken as a personal response. Others are blunt. "Sorry, not for us." Really.

Today, I got a rejection from a publisher--a form letter. Like some others, this one had my name plugged in, as though they were trying to make it appear less form-y. Well, I have two things to say to that. One--if you're going to do that, make sure the name you plug in is in the same font as the rest of the letter. And, two--ditto goes for the color of the type.

Anyway...

I guess this is a good place to throw in the limerick I wrote some time ago on the very subject of rejections. I've mentioned before that this is the only form of poetry I've mastered, but until now I don't think I've ever posted any. It's not like you can get them published all over the place--especially ones about something as obscure as rejection letters. So, let's (hopefully) end this post with a laugh:

The bitterest juice of the vine
Is a letter that offers decline.
To tears I succumb,
And relinquish aplomb
By drowning my sorrows in whine.

Waiting....

I'm feeling extra antsy today. I have so many short stories submitted right now, and three of them should--according to the response times listed on the magazines' sites--be getting responses NOW. I'm fairly good at submitting and moving on to the next story, but when it gets to the end of the estimated response time...well, let's just say the "Send/Recv" button gets a workout :P.

At least the other day I got a letter from a magazine that wants FOUR of my personal essays. Yay! The waiting does pay off :).

Quick update (Oct 16th)--
On the topic of short story repsonses...I have a story that was accepted five months ago by Mindflights, but I hadn't been given a date for publication. I wrote the editor today, and she wrote back right away (Thank you!) and told me the story is slated for November! Yay! I'll post as soon as I know the exact date :).

Unlikely Limerick

Well, on a whim I submitted a limerick to an anthology of poetry about vampires...and guess what! It got accepted :D.

Check out Vampyr Verse for info on the antho. There's a few days left to submit, if you are so inclined. The book is scheduled to release on Halloween. And you can enter to win a free copy of the book in a couple of different ways if you follow the link.

Obviously because they have rights to the poem now, I can't print it here or anything. But I will tell you--if you've read any of my old posts about a certain book series that shall go unnamed, you'll have an idea of what/who I'm making fun of!

More coming soon...

I got the news today that another of my short stories has been accepted by The Absent Willow Review! I'm very excited--it's a story I really loved writing. It will be out in January 2010, which is amazingly right around the corner :). The title is "A Day Better Spent"--I'll let you ruminate over what kind of story that might be in a magazine that features horror writing...

In the meantime, check out the current issue of The Absent Willow Review...the stories this month are great. I've read several of them at this point, and my favorite so far is Cravat of the Damned. You will die laughing. Or undie, as the case may be.

My Guest Spot

Today Shawna Williams featured me as a guest blogger. She's doing a series on writers and posting their "writing journeys." If you're curious about mine, take a hop over to Shawna's blog, My Father's Oldsmobile, and check it out.

Shawna just signed a contract with Desert Breeze Publishing for her first novel, No Other. I've had the honor of reading No Other, and it's awesome. (You all know how I feel about romance novels, but this one won me over, totally.)

And take a close look at the very last line of the blog. That made me smile more than anything!