Good post! I agree with the points made, but with some exceptions. I don't think you can read the tealeaves of most rejections. We never know what is happening at a magazine. It's also very rare that you have the perfect submission for a particular journal--you can never know, no matter how many issues of it you read. I've had it happen on a few occasions where I have gotten so frustrated that I picked some work at random to send to magazines where I had a history of rejections. Lo and behold, some of the random picks were accepted. I have no idea what that means: maybe that I am lousy at second-guessing editors (I'll admit it), or maybe that the editors themselves don't know what they want in any systematic way, even though they will write wise paragraphs about their selection process. Regardless, the answer is to keep 40 or 50 submissions out at a time. I almost never submit to journals that don't allow simultaneous submissions, unless they have a track record of making a decision within a few days. (Yes, those exist. The Threepenny Review is one of them.) Finally, is there really any excuse in the world for a magazine to hold on to a submission for over a year? And, to charge you $3+ for the privilege? I don't think so. I keep a mental list of those and don't repeat the experience.
Good stuff. The hardest part of submitting (to me) is not the rejections, but the long wait times. Checking Submittable every day, month after month, is a little like Chinese water torture.
There are form rejections without comment other than "No thanks." And there are personal rejections with helpful comments. I often puzzle at those in-between kinds of rejections that say something like "Please wait one month before submitting again," or words to that effect. Do they really mean it, or are they just letting us down gently? In other words, are they really open to seeing more from us?
Good post! I agree with the points made, but with some exceptions. I don't think you can read the tealeaves of most rejections. We never know what is happening at a magazine. It's also very rare that you have the perfect submission for a particular journal--you can never know, no matter how many issues of it you read. I've had it happen on a few occasions where I have gotten so frustrated that I picked some work at random to send to magazines where I had a history of rejections. Lo and behold, some of the random picks were accepted. I have no idea what that means: maybe that I am lousy at second-guessing editors (I'll admit it), or maybe that the editors themselves don't know what they want in any systematic way, even though they will write wise paragraphs about their selection process. Regardless, the answer is to keep 40 or 50 submissions out at a time. I almost never submit to journals that don't allow simultaneous submissions, unless they have a track record of making a decision within a few days. (Yes, those exist. The Threepenny Review is one of them.) Finally, is there really any excuse in the world for a magazine to hold on to a submission for over a year? And, to charge you $3+ for the privilege? I don't think so. I keep a mental list of those and don't repeat the experience.
Good stuff. The hardest part of submitting (to me) is not the rejections, but the long wait times. Checking Submittable every day, month after month, is a little like Chinese water torture.
This is great info. Thank you for this . Now I have a lot of work to do!
There are form rejections without comment other than "No thanks." And there are personal rejections with helpful comments. I often puzzle at those in-between kinds of rejections that say something like "Please wait one month before submitting again," or words to that effect. Do they really mean it, or are they just letting us down gently? In other words, are they really open to seeing more from us?