So I woke up around noon today to find another rejection sitting in my inbox. Not the one I'm waiting on, though -- this one was for a poem that I'd kinda/sorta forgotten that I'd submitted. Which makes it worse. I wasn't expecting it, you see, so it's like this thing blindsides me from left field and says, "Hey, by the way, you suck!" Except it didn't actually say that. It didn't really say anything, being a standard rejection. (It did contain a personalized parenthetical -- or I assume it was, owing to the typo -- although this only said, "Trry us again, B. Thanks." Which is pretty much what the rejection said, minus the "this work was not selected" bit.) And this lack of commentary, I've found, also somehow makes rejections worse. Yesterday's rejection was for a piece that I still think is the best story I've ever written, and it was the second rejection I received in response to that story. It said nothing; standard reply. The first rejection, however, did have brief comments of a rather unflattering nature. But this was somehow comforting, since not only do I disagree with them entirely, but several persons to whom I've shown the story have had encouraging things to say. So then, at least, I could respond (i.e., to myself, not by way of nasty direct replies) by saying, "Philistine!" or something to that effect, and I didn't take this rejection very hard at all -- the rejection came on a Friday, and the story was in the mail en route to another editor on the following Monday. And even if I had agreed with them, or seen anything worthy of note in them, I could've sat down and revised the story in an attempt to make it better. But this telling me nothing...tells me nothing. And it's kind of hard to take.

Then again, I'm not sure what's worse. The poem that just got rejected today has also been rejected before, and that rejection contained the following comment: "I like this, but not enough to buy." And how does one respond to a comment like that? Moreover, how does one respond to a comment like that when the pay rate for poetry is $3 flat per poem? I think I'd prefer the standard rejection, although in this case I do have something to talk about. With the standard rejection I get nothing. So maybe I wouldn't prefer the standard rejection after all.

A sale, by the way, would be preferable to all of these. Unless of course the story is bad, and should be rejected, in which case... I'll not go on. 😉

So now I have no idea where to send my flagship story next (anyone know any markets for really heavy/philosophical and allegorical speculative fiction?), but perhaps I will try them again and pull up another poem from my archives (or write a new one; I've had an idea for an interesting piece...). And since there's only the one story still floating out there (no, wait; I think there are two...), perhaps in the next few days I'll send another one out into the void to see if it can fetch anything. Hm, that sort of gives me an idea for another story. It also reminds me of the item fetch quests in the Monster Rancher games.

But I think I want to take a short break from stories to get Scary-Crayon online. I've more/less got all of the opening content finished (subsequent viewings, no doubt, will bring minor adjustments and edits, but very minor); all I need is a main page to serve as the article hub. Like a table of contents with links. So that should be up in the next couple of days, I hope. I'll keep you posted. If you care. In the meantime, would you like a preview? Here, the Scary-Crayon review of "Sergio Lapel's Drawing Blood". (Just don't click the back link at the bottom of the page; that doesn't work yet. Or feel free to click it, if you like 404 errors. Up to you.) Technically this isn't a proper preview, as this is just a "reprinting" of an article I did for Moviebomb.com about a year ago, but hey, the title graphic is new... 😉

Oh, alright, one more preview. You have no idea how much I enjoy making these. 🙂 Okay, that does it for this post. Seeya next time.