I reached an inevitable, yet no less important, milestone in my literary career yesterday. After electronically submitting a short story to Shock Totem slightly over a month ago, I have finally received my first ever rejection letter.
As far as I'm concerned, this response was welcome news, primarily because the magazine responded at all (sometimes they don't). The swiftness of the reply, which was less than half the maximum, was impressive. Even more impressive is the fact that Shock Totem is currently on summer break. So not only did they reply faster than normal, they did it with a diminished editorial staff. All told, I was extremely satisfied with my first rejection experience.
I'm not marking this one as a loss. It's a bronze medal. The story's going back out as soon as I find another magazine with the right submission guidelines. Just four more rejections and I can submit it to The Rejected Quarterly.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
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2 comments:
Congrats, sir. You can now get a jump on that drinking problem that F. Scott Fitzgerald had nailed down. Here's to your second liver transplant.
Fitzgerald would've gotten a lot more rejections if his editor hadn't basically rewritten all of his books prior to publication. I hope I'm as fortunate.
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