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70-day form rejection from the Extreme Planets anthology (I guess my planet just wasn't extreme enough) and a 17-day form rejection from F&SF.
Hi renard,
Sorry about the rejection. The "next market" is indeed part of our form, but it doesn't mean that we don't mean it! Everyone who reads submissions at UFO is a writer first, and we root for the submitting authors to find a good home for their stories, when the submission isn't a perfect fit for us.
Ugh! Sorry to hear it was just a form R after that long wait. Oh well, at least the suspense is over.
45-day rejection from Abomination Magazine with a short, complimentary PS.
Hi Alex,
Wow! Thanks for replying; I was afraid I'd offended you. I wish every editor was as transparent regarding this process as you.
Best,
Alicia
Haha, depends. I don't want editors coming on here or emailing me, to say I shouldn't consider their rejections "rough".I would dearly love to see more transparency from other markets. Maybe UFO can inspire others? I can only hope!
Perhaps on some level they mean it, but the value is divided up infinitesimally among the vast number of rejections they send out. And that's fine; I think they should be polite because no one likes a grouch! However, when they add special touches ("Your writing shows a lot of merit," or "I look forward to seeing what else you have," or "I noticed uneven prose") as form, that's just mean. Because there's no possible way that's always true, and therefore it is just polite and/or damaging nonsense.[OFF-TOPIC]Just because something is a form it doesn't mean the intent behind the standardized phrases is false.
I don't want editors coming on here or emailing me, to say I shouldn't consider their rejections "rough".
Oh yeah. For horror, I send it to: Apex, Shock Totem, One Buck Horror, and Fantasy & Science Fiction Mag. Duotrope.com spells out the available markets clearly. Good resource for short fic writing. They have a different query standard, though, so you may want to brush up before you send it out. Novel queries are much harder, so the transition should be easy.304 days?
I've noticed a lot of y'all write short stories. Are there specific markets that you submit to? I have a lot of horror tales!
Higher tier form R from F&SF, 8 days.
Oh yeah. For horror, I send it to: Apex, Shock Totem, One Buck Horror, and Fantasy & Science Fiction Mag. Duotrope.com spells out the available markets clearly. Good resource for short fic writing.
Heh, well, I haven't gotten a response from Gordon yet either. I just meant the highest of the three possible not-Gordon responses.Nice! I've never gotten a higher tier form from F&SF*
Heh, well, I haven't gotten a response from Gordon yet either. I just meant the highest of the three possible not-Gordon responses.
1. Didn't quite work for me - high, assistant editor probably finished it, but they didn't like it enough to send it up to Gordon.
2. Didn't hold my interest - middle, lost assistant editor's interest somewhere after the beginning.
3. Didn't grab my interest - low, assistant editor couldn't get into the story.
If you search hard enough you may find Gordon and company's cheat sheet about this, but it's documented on various sites now. Of course there are better rejections than high forms, such as personals, Gordon forms, and then Gordon personals. Still, it's nice to know that at about 4K it was still stable and well written enough to warrant slogging through.
Got my first novel rejection! Other than hating it, they did say my writing was fluent! Woo!
Shimmer personal. They always say they like the concept, so I'm beginning to wonder if that's not a standard compliment before they unleash the critical hounds.