One Editor’s Poison….

I was clearing through what seemed like one thousand emails in my inbox yesterday when I came across an email from a magazine that shall remain unnamed. It was a form rejection letter. Half way through it, it occurred to me I hadn’t submitted anything to the magazine this year so I pulled up my submissions tracking file from last year. After a quick run through, I discovered I had received a rejection letter for a submission that was over a year old. The same article has since been published elsewhere. We’ll just slide by the absurdity of getting a response after a year and move on to the positive aspect of all this.

Despite not receiving a response from this magazine within “3 – 6 months” as promised, I didn’t let it get to me too much. I dusted the story and resent it to several more editors. The editor who went on to publish it responded within 2 weeks and required only minor editing. What one editor considers to be crap will give a different editor orgasmic literary euphoria. As a writer is not pre-equipped with a radar to lock in on the right editor, I think it’s vital to have a slightly inflated belief in oneself, the operative word being slightly as overkill will only get in your way. This inflated belief is what will keep you sending out those articles and stories after fifty five thousand rejections in a row.

Keep writing, keep sending it out and keep the inflated belief in yourself under control :).

See you tomorrow. I have a great story about the discovery of smoothies lined up.