Last night, for the first time ever in my illustrious (okay, short and spastic) published writing career, I got to approve edits to one of my stories. This isn’t the kind of thing that’s ever kept me awake at night, but I have always wondered what kind of edits I would get back. This editor at Skive Magazine was really cool about the whole thing. He made very few edits to my piece – added a few individual words here and there to make sentences less fragmenty. And he added like three lines of dialogue, and gave me the exact logic behind it and asked if it was okay. Something tells me not all edits will go so smoothly, but for a first time I’m pretty happy with how it all went.
Then there’s the other side of the coin. I got a rejection letter this weekend. Not my first, not at all. Most certainly not my last. This one had me irrationally bummed, though. It was one of those self-doubt instilling moments. See, in my vast array of limited knowledge, I’ve learned there are three kinds of rejections in the short story market.
- Thanks for trying, but um…we’re not that fond of your story of your writing. Please feel free to continue reading our magazine, but don’t send us any more work.
- We really liked your writing style, but the story just didn’t do it for us. But we think it would be swell if you’d send us more work for consideration.
- We really liked your story and your writing style. We wanted very badly to publish it, but we already had something simliar in this issue/didn’t have enough room and needed a shorter piece/had too much room and needed a longer piece/etc
I’ve gotten one of the #3’s before. Which was both a bummer and kind of cool. A bummer because I really liked the magazine, and really wanted to own a copy with my story in it.
I think the one last night was a #1, though. The reason I say my disappointment with this is irrational is because I technically knew the story wasn’t ready for publication. I know it still has issues, and needs some work, and I got lazy and submitted it anyway. “Maybe they won’t notice.” The thing is, they probably will, and they did. Lesson learned (until next time).
The bigger issue is that it’s tied back to two other stories of mine. The first one is only loosely related – they came from the same base characters and have grown into two very different ideas (sort of). And the second one is a novella I’m about to start writing for a group project with some friends (*waves* Hi, Kate!). The short story is backstory for this novella, and I’m having so much trouble with the short story that I’m starting to wonder if the novella is a good idea.
They were both really solid ideas when I thought of them. I loved and adored both plot-lines and wanted nothing more than to put them on paper and make the reader love them just as much. Now there’s this little voice in the back of my head going “You know, it would be a lot better if you just made one or two of them into angels. Who wouldn’t want to read that?”
I will silence the doubt and the drunken muse, though. I will use rationale to push them away so I can funnel all of my irrational into my characters, instead. *fingers crossed*