on positive rejections

A rejection letter I received this week got me thinking about, well, rejections:

Thank you for considering (OUR PUBLICATION) for “Angel Sword”. This is quite
well written, but doesn’t meet our needs at this time.

Your presentation of action and character drama is quite solid from a
pulp action storytelling perspective, and I’m fond of those types of
stories. But (OUR PUBLICATION’S) readers are looking for something a bit
quieter, and usually not common tropes such as angels and demons. We
wish you the best of luck placing this with another market.

Thanks very much for considering (OUR PUBLICATION) and we wish you the best
with your future writing.

Heh heh. My writing’s a lot of things, but quiet ain’t one of them. Like, our current “Choose Your Own Adventure” isn’t like this:

“Should Cray Marsh attend tea at the governor’s mansion, or accept an invitation to brunch with Lord Montefort-Richemulot’s in-laws? And what color dress should she wear for the occasion?”

No, my writing’s more like:

“Should Cray shoot the GIANT MAN-EATING SPACE BUG with her plasma pistol, stab it in the braincase with a knife, or attempt to set it on fire? Or all three?”

But, that’s an aside. To the main point, which involves neither tea nor giant man-eating space bugs, but rejections. Some writers who get terribly depressed by near-miss rejections, but that is the wrong attitude to take. Because if you get a positive rejection letter along the lines of “I rather liked this story, but it’s not for us”, you can be sure the editor was telling the truth.

Why?

See, it’s really, really, really hard to get opinions on unpublished stuff. (After something is published, of course, you will have a bountiful harvest of people available to tell you just how much it sucks.) It’s hard to get family to provide opinions on your work, since they don’t want to hurt your feelings, aren’t interested, or don’t care. It’s hard to get friends to provide opinions on your work, since there’s always a chance you will cease to be friends afterward. (And, let us be honest, constantly nagging family & friends to read your story is something of an imposition, isn’t it?) And it’s exceptionally difficult to get random strangers to provide opinions on your stuff, since sooner or later they get frightened and call the cops, and that’s just not fun for anybody.

But an editor in a rejection letter has no reason to lie to you, does he? After all, he’s already rejecting the story, so telling the truth costs him nothing. And if he didn’t like the story, it’s much safer and easier to include the Standard Form Rejection (“Your story does not meet our needs at this time…”) than an honest opinion (“In addition to not meeting our needs at this time, your story is an abominable boil upon the arse of the English language…”),  since there’s no sense in antagonizing a complete stranger. Indeed, an editor who includes a positive opinion with a rejection is doing a kindness, an act of mercy, since he had no obligation to say he liked the story he rejected…but he did anyway.

So if you receive a positive rejection letter, my fellow writers, take heart! It’s a good sign.

-JM