Highs...and Lows

The postman brought me two rejection letters yesterday. Both form rejections. After selling 'Flying High' to Cobblestone Press, I'm unsurprisingly disappointed.

And this after getting a personal email from the same editor for my first submission to her magazine. She rejected that one too, but the email told me exactly why and said that otherwise I was definitely in the right zone for tone, style and whatnot. So I had high hopes for these other two stories I'd sent her. Alas, my hopes have been dashed.

However, the Ancient Art of Rejectomancy requires me to frame these rejections in the best possible light. So, I'll point out that they consisted of a form with various checkboxes for the different reasons why a story might be rejected, ranging from writing in the wrong 'person' to the situations not being credible to a simple but crushing statement that the writing wasn't of sufficient quality (ouch, that one would hurt!), or simply being oversold in a particular category.

In my case, the reason checked was "other", with a handwritten sentence detailing what was lacking. So I now have three data points on what works in my writing and what doesn't--at least for that market. So this week I'll be working on a new story to send out to them. And, of course, looking for another market to send the rejected stories to (but, given the format and content--non-romantic erotica, i.e., porn, basically*) the number of markets is rather limited. These stories may end up in my 'dead story file' or trunk fairly soon.