Just a quick personal anecdote that might encourage some of you out there, particularly those who struggle with rejection (which as we have discussed, is just a fact of life for writers). It’s not just the quality of your writing that is a factor in publishing.

So, I wrote a story, which I quite liked. Normally whether or not you like a story doesn’t have much to do with its quality, but I’ve been around for a while, and I thought it was pretty good.

It was rejected a few times mostly for thematic fit, and then sat with an editor at a pretty prestigious magazine for about two months, who gushed about how great it was and moved it through the publishing process until it was ultimately rejected because they had several similar stories, or something like that. The detail isn’t important: what’s important is that it was one of the good rejections, one of those personal, ‘we love this, it’s great but unfortunately [phase of the moon/colour of the ink/ennui] etc.’

Them’s the breaks in writing, and personally a rejection like that feels like a win to me (aka validation).

Anyway, I sent the story elsewhere, to a less prestigious magazine, and it was rejected with a score this time (as this particular publication scored submissions, which I personally think is cool – any feedback is good feedback as far as I am concerned). The fun fact though, is that it scored significantly below the already low average for submissions.

Never to be upset by rejections (it’s a trained skill) I just thought I’d share how one story could both appeal to a Big Deal magazine and do several rounds of editorial reading with excellent feedback, yet score woefully at a different magazine.

Same manuscript! True story.

I hope this will make you sleep a little better. Also, I have this now, and I drink a shot every time I get a rejection. It’s great!

Susan Morris provides some tips for dealing with editors (and how not to deal with editors).

For the record, I love all editors, and I’ve never met an editor that I didn’t respect. Nor would I ever criticise an editor, or disagree with them. Never ever forever, strike me down if I lie!

Writing to an editor is intimidating. Editors are these daunting, mysterious figures who work in the shadows, wielding the red pens of judgment, and witnessing the godlike works of Really Good Writers ™ almost daily. They can also say some really hard things to swallow! But your relationship with your editor is one of the most important relationships you will have—right after your relationship with your cat and right before your relationship with chocolate.

Some of the things Susan lists may seem obvious, eg. ‘DO be nice’, but then we’ve all thought following guidelines would be easy, and I’ve heard some horror stories there. In fact, Maurice Broaddus discussed that in this recent interview:

Sigh.

Sigh.

Sigh.

The guidelines are right there. Black and white. Pretty simple. Yet we got everything from full novels to things that couldn’t be classified as stories. But we expected a fair number of “the title says ‘Faith’ and I’ve been sitting on this story with nowhere else to send it, so what’ll it hurt to send it” type stories. The thing is, for all the complaint about seeing such ill-suited and ill-written stories, they were easy to reject within a few lines. Which is good when you have a huge slush pile.

Do check out Susan’s article here:
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2012/08/dont-poke-the-editor-six-deadly-donts-and-dos-for-dealing-with-editors.html

Joshua Henkin writes a great guest post for Writer’s Digest:

OK, let’s dispense with the obvious—namely, that there is a kernel of truth to the old saw “Show, don’t tell.” [...]

But it doesn’t follow from this that a writer should never say a character is handsome or happy. It doesn’t follow that all a writer should do is show. To my mind, the phrase “Show, don’t tell” is a wink and a nod, an implicit compact between a lazy teacher and a lazy student when the writer needs to dig deeper to figure out what isn’t working in his story.

I really like that last bit: looking at ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ as an understood shorthand to address problems in a story. A bit of writing jargon, if you will. Being jargon, it’s only useful as a communications shortcut to people already in the business. This means that if we hand that bit of jargon to a brand new writer they will simply take that advice literally, not as the understood ‘your story needs work’ agreement that it would otherwise be.

And there’s real fall-out. I see it constantly among my students, who are nothing if not adjective-happy. Do we need to know that a couch is a “big brown torn vinyl couch”? We are writing fiction, not constructing a Mad Lib. Yet writers have been told to describe, and so they do, ad nauseum. It’s like the sentence that was popular in typing classes—“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs.” Well, this is a good typing sentence (it contains every letter of the alphabet), but it’s a bad fiction sentence.

Read the rest of his really insightful piece here:
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/why-show-dont-tell-is-the-great-lie-of-writing-workshops

Time for another great writing post by Susan J. Morris on the Omnivoracious blog:

When you tell a story with a twist, you are taking on the role of the Trickster. As the reader’s sole experience of your story is in your authorial hands, we readers kind of expect you to tell it to us straight. So when you take that trust, then give the story a twist, you’re tricking us! [...] But, of course, as many a Trickster has learned the hard way, you have to be careful when playing the Trickster, because while we may love to be tricked, we hate being made to look foolish.

Susan describes a few archetypical twist styles with examples, so click through to read the rest:
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2011/12/tell-it-like-a-trickster-how-to-write-a-good-twist.html

Today Susan J. Morris posts wisdom from Ed Greenwood and Erin M. Evans on the Omnivoracious blog:

To celebrate the deadline-driven inspiration of NaNoWriMo, this Monday, Wednesday (today!), and Friday, some of my favorite professional authors are spilling their secrets on how they write even when the muse is M.I.A.

I’ve always found the old adage ‘Just Write!’ perfect: two words that sum up what you need to do to take this job seriously: just write, just write, just write. Sit down. Shut off distractions. Write. Submit.

Doing that over and over gives you experience, thick skin (and/or writer zen) and will eventually get you published. Sheer persistence (and the reality that practice makes, at best, good enough) will get you through.

But… But it’s so easy for me to sit here and tell you that’s all you have to do. It would be helpful if there was some advice on how to stay motivated, hey?

Ed Greenwood:

[...] I always have six to eight projects on the go at any one time, and when I start to run down or hit a wall on one, I just switch to another.

Erin M. Evans:

When I get hit with “writer’s block,” I fall back on two techniques, depending on the cause. [...]

Sorry, you’ll have to click through to find out more:
http://www.omnivoracious.com/2011/11/tips-from-the-pros-greenwood-and-evans-on-how-to-jumpstart-your-writing.html