Replying to an earlier post, a friend of mine pointed out Stephen King’s method of dealing with rejection letters:

As a young writer, King nailed a long, railroad spike into his bedroom wall, which he proudly hung all of his rejection letters from.  Years passed, and he had stacked rejection letters all the way to the edge of
the spike, until, one day, one of his stories was published.

From then on, for each story that was published, he would remove a rejection letter from the spike.

I think you can pretty much guess what happened next for young Stephie King.

I was thinking of doing something similar, but I think that the technique above may only work if you become a full-time writer.  My original story was actually accepted by a fiction magazine after being rejected by 6 others – using King’s method I would need to publish 6 more short stories to clean off the spike.

My technique is much more simple – recycle the rejection letters into scrap paper.  If I need to print a Google Map, no problem – just grab a letter and print on the back of it.  I think seeing the stack of letters would only dishearten me, rather than encourage me to keep going.

Right now I’m looking at the back of a letter from an assistant editor saying that “Red, Blue” didn’t grab him.  On the back I’ve written a to-do list with several tasks, with the last one reading: “Blog about recycling rejection letters.”

Mission accomplished.  Time to throw out the to-do list and start writing a new story.

There are probably two different kinds of screenwriters. The kind who start with a blank sheet of paper and just bull through to the end of the thing, and the expanders, like me.

People like me work as if they’re applying coats of paint to the same surface. The only blank sheet of paper is the original premise document. When it comes to writing the outline, I paste the original premise document into a new file and start writing over the top of it: expanding it, rewording it, moving scenes around. And when it comes to the screenplay, I paste the outline into a new document, and start writing over the top of it.

http://castlevaniadraculascurse.com/

Our original idea was to do a horror double feature. The genre I wanted to tackle was slasher films, because I’m a big fan of late-’70s, early-’80s slasher films. The only thing was, what makes them so good is the genre is so rigid. And I had an idea about a guy who kills girls with his car as opposed to a machete, and I put it in a slasher-film structure. Other than the big car moments, though, my thing could be a Eugene O’Neill play. These girls just talk and talk and talk. If it wasn’t for the car stuff, I could do my thing on stage. more>>

Apparently, Eugene O’Neill’s work is just “talk and talk and talk” – as long as you have a lot of talking, your work is as good as a Eugene O’Neill.

It’s interesting how Tarantino is aware of the biggest fault I have with Death Proof, but sees it as a good thing.  I think at this point he’s so surrounded by sycophants willing to praise his screenwriting abilities and “ear for dialogue” that they’re unwilling to tell him when it goes on for WAY too long and stalls the movie in its tracks.  Yes, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs had lots of dialogue, but that doesn’t mean that Tarantino’s dialogue is always appropriate for the scene or the plot.

Also – playwrights may be able to take any given subject matter and turn it into great theater (as Arthur Miller did to an average salesman), but I doubt a Pulitzer will ever be awarded to a story about “a guy who kills girls with his car as opposed to a machete.”

Paradox (The Magazine of Historyical and Speculative Fiction) didn’t provide a rejection letter, but did say they weren’t accepting submission. Apparently the magazine “is temporarily closed to submissions from October 1, 2006 through June 1, 2006,” but “you are welcome to re-submit your story once the magazine opens to submissions again.”

No big deal – in truth, I don’t think they’d accept the story even if I resubmitted it. However, I appreciate the fact that someone opened my story, added their form letter, stuck it in the self-addressed stamped envelope, and mailed it back to me. A small gesture but appreciated.

Hadrosaur (aka Tales of the Talisman) sent a very encouraging rejection letter. It began with the statement “With regret, I must inform you that we’ve decided not to purchase this work at this time.” It didn’t say “your story has no plot” or “we’ll never buy it” (though that’s kind of implied) but now’s not the right time.

The letter continued with a checklist of”the more common reasons we are forced to turn stories away:”

• The plot didn’t fully engage us – either this is a variation of a plot we’ve seen too often or the conflicet simply didn’t grab and hold our interest.
• The characters didn’t work for us. Better dialogue and description is often the cure.
• The use of language – grammar, spelling, word choice and/or sentence structure – was weak.
• Not enough science fiction or fantasy content.
• Technology, magic, devices not well utilized – i.e. the “tools” used by the characters were either not suitable because they seemed too derivative of other SF/Fantasy universes or didn’t strike us as believable.
• Story too violent for us – i.e. too bloody/gory, involved violence to children, or we simply felt was too strong in tone for this publication.
• Sexual content inappropriate for us – we do allow sexual content, but it’s our call whether it was sufficiently tasteful and appropriate for Tales of the Talisman.
• Story was over 6000 words. We will occasionally consider slightly longer, but please query at the address above before sending.
• We are currently overstocked and closed to all submissions. We will reopen on ______. If possible,please check our website for updates.

Only the first item on the list was checked off. By inference, the story has the following things going for it:

• My characters work
• I kin spell good!!
• Just enough sci-fi
• Technology “tools” utilized well
• Not too bloody/gory
• Not outright pornography
• Under 6000 words
• They’re submission doors are wide open

The checklist is an interesting commentary on the other submissions they may get (I envision lots of gory, misspelled, vampire porn). The comment “The plot didn’t fully engage us” sounds reasonable – The Magazine of Science and Fiction also commented that the tale didn’t grab their interest.

Hadrosaur’s letter continuted with a nice handwritten note, assumedly from editor David Lee Summers:

I liked your exploration of AI’s, but I’m agraid the overall plot didn’t grab me quite strongly enough to buy. Best of luck with “The Perfect Toast” and please feel free to try again with another.

The note may have taken less than a minute to write, but I appreciate the fact that someone actually read my story, considered it, offered helpful criticism, and took the time to write a note.

The letter continued with a nice conclusion to let the author down easy:

Note: We receive far more stories than we can use during our reading periods. As a results, we have to turn away quality works simply because of limited space. That said, please continue to write and submit. Just because this submission did not work for us doesn’t mean that it won’t work with another market or that another submission of yours won’t work for us.

Kind of the “It’s not you, it’s me” of writing rejection letters.

The criticism on the “overall plot” is something I’ll have to work on. I think for my next story I’ll try outlining the bare bones of the plot (1. David wakes up, 2. David meets with coworkers, etc.) before writing – just getting the “who does what” straight in my own head. I worked on this story so much I think the plot went awry – could’ve been reorganized to be more interesting.

Only a few more “rejections” to go, and this particular story will have run its course. Got to get going on the next one!

Thank you for submitting “The Perfect Toast” [the name of my story] but I’m going to pass on it.  This tale didn’t grab my interest, I’m afraid.  Good luck to you with this one, and thanks again for sending it our way.

Sincerely,

John Joseph Adams
Assistant Editor

In retrospect, I’m not sure this story’s worthy of publication – the core idea is interesting but the execution could be a bit better.  However, I’m taking it as a call to do better next time rather than a sign that I’m not cut out to write fiction.

The one good thing from all these “bounce-backs” is that I can see which fiction magazines are still in operation and which have shut down.  Unfortunately this story is 20 pages heavy and $1.35 worth of postage, so I wish I’d chosen a “lighter” story for my first submission.

Oddly, my second story (written during a long and dull all-day session on pricing) is two pages long and (in my opinion) much tighter and more interesting.  After this first round of submissions is finished, I’m looking forward to submitting the next one to a wider variety of publishers.

Farewell to thee, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.   Sort of sad to think that there’s one less channel for science fiction short stories, but I guess I’ll just have to look for another place to send it.

Or start writing in other genres, to match the place I’m going to submit to.

• apathetic
• erudite
• esoteric
• hemisphere
• xylophone

…and so on for up to 10 words.  The assignment was supposed to teach us how to spell the word correctly, and how to use it in context. 

Of course, in grade school (as in later school) some students would choose to complete the assignment quickly rather than learn something.  Every now and then someone would write a story that went like this:

Once there was a boy who had to write a story with vocabulary words.  The words were apathetic, erudite, esoteric, hemisphere, xylophone, [and so on till the list was complete].  Can you guess what story the boy wrote? 

(No, I never used this tactic.  Honest!)

I think of that when writing my next few blog entries.  When I made my resolution to write 1 blog post each day, I figured that I would use it as a daily writing exercise.  However, I’ve found it difficult to actually sit down and write once a day, so I’ve been writing several posts in one setting and then fudging the “timestamps” in WordPress to fill in the dates. 

For example, I’m writing this post on 3/3/07 at 2:11pm, but setting the date to 2/19 to fill in the 2/19 gap in my archives.  In this way, someone looking at the archive will see that there’s a blog post a day.

Can’t say that I feel too bad about this – the main point is to get into the habit of writing and I think overall the quality of my blog posts is improving.  I imagine I can still learn how to improve my wirting without actually following the letter of my “1 blog post a day” assignment.

Dear Contributor,

Thank you very much for letting us see your submission.  Unfortunately, it does not suit the needs of the magazine at this time.

Your submission has been read by an editor, but the press of time and manuscripts does not permit personal replies or criticism.  For your general information, though, most stories are rejected because they lack a new idea or theme.  A great many of the ideas that may seem innovative to an SF newcomer are in fact overfamiliar to readers more experienced in the field.  The odds greatly favor this being the cause of this rejection.

Sincerely,

Sheila Williams
Editor

After reading this letter, I envisioned someone at Asimov’s reading the story (or at least part of it), attaching a Post-it marked “Unoriginal” to the printout, and giving it to a lowly intern who attached the “unoriginal” rejection letter variant to the printout and mailed it back to me.

And yet I feel oddly inspired.  Perhaps the story was unoriginal in concept; I’ll submit a more original concept to Asimov’s next time.  I think perhaps I needed to get past the mental block of submitting the story and getting someone to look at it – lucky I have a number of other stories to finish off and send out.

I was even more encouraged when Googled “rejection letters,” and came across the following page at http://lettersofrejection.com/displayletters.php?qryID=53:

Dear Contributor:Thank you very much for letting us see the enclosed submission. Unfortunately it does not suit the needs of the magazine at this time.

Your submission has been read by an editor, but the press of time and manuscripts (approximately 850 per month) does not permit personal replies or criticism. For your general information, though, most stories are rejected because they lack a new idea of theme. A great many of the ideas that may seem innovative to an SF newcomer are in fact overfamiliar to readers more experienced in the field. The odds greatly favor this being the case of this rejection.

Another common cause (all too common, we’re afraid) of rejection is the obvious lack of basic English compositional skills on the part of the author. By this we mean that the writer has misspelled or misused everyday words, and/or mispunctuated same. Stories are rejected on this basis because a writer must be familiar with the tools of his or her trade, just as an electrician or carpenter must.

Finally, your story may have been rejected, not because it lacked a new idea, or was misspelled or mispunctuated, or because the writing was not “professional” enough, but simply because it failed to rise far enough above the other 849 seen that month.

Sincerely,
Gardner Dozois
Editor

The rejection letter above was last updated 9/25/03.  It’s possible they just deleted the last two paragraphs, or maybe they’re saying I have “basic English compositional skills” by sending the shorter variant!  (Okay, they’re probably just saving on toner but I’ll take encouragement where I can. 

I’m reluctant to mail the story to the other addresses I’ve collected, even though I have a number of envelopes, stamps, and printouts downstairs ready to go.  If the story is indeed unoriginal, I may just be wasting postage by sending it out for more rejection.  Then again, I may at least get some more constructive criticism in future submissions.

What the heck – I’ll send at least send some printouts to the other sci-fi magazines, just to see what their rejection letters look like.  www.lettersofrejection.com has a pretty good collection of rejection letters, but I also started a page at http://joesanswers.com/index.php?title=Writing to track my own rejection experiences.

I plan to use this post as an online record of where and how I should submit the manuscript.  Here are the links I have so far:

• Markets paying at least 3 cents a word: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mslee/mag.html
• Asimov submission guidelines: http://www.asimovs.com/info/guidelines.shtml
• Fantasy & Science Fiction: http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/glines.htm

This may be more suitable for a wiki.  Think this’ll be a good reason to set one up.