I wrote this story a while ago. I’ve been off-and-on revising it for a while, but never had the courage to send it out. In the spirit of this year’s query challenge, I sent it out.
And I got a personalized rejection! Specifically, I got actual, actionable feedback: “This story had some interesting ideas, but we wanted a greater sense of clarity from the prose and focus from the progression of the plot.”
Do I immediately know how to move forward with the revision of this story? Well I didn’t on April 1st when I received the rejection, but it’s June now.
I’ve been reading and watching videos about story structure, I’ve been pondering the structure of several of my stories. As a result, this story has gone into my “Needs revision” pile.
This is the type of feedback I crave. The more I enter this grind, the more I study the craft itself, the clearer I see what I am missing to be attractive to publication.
To be fair, I’ve been told this before: I need to focus on the universal within the specific. I generally write stories that are just, well, stories. And that works for me. Some of these stories I may post here because they aren’t a fit for traditional publication, and that’s okay.
This isn’t an indictment of traditional publication or my writing. It’s a reality that I am very very slowly coming to fully understand and accept.
So cheers to this particular publication, and cheers to what I feel is a turning point in my own writing journey!
Note on letter images: I have here and will always black out the name of the market and the name of the person who sent the letter. These posts are not meant to speak about the publications at all. These are about my reactions to the letters and what I can learn from them.
Leave a Reply