Give yourself a hug sweetie – you are amazing!

ps the packing neuroses sound just like me! and ma!

The writer in me wants feedback, so when rejecting a story I want to provide something to the person who took the leap and submitted a story such that they can learn from the experience and do better next time. Given that I’m quite often sifting through twenty or thirty stories in a sitting, that becomes difficult and at some point responding in a timely fashion take precedent over responding with any degree of critical depth.

Editing for 365 is about finding the balance between selecting only the very best stories for the outlet and providing a showcase for new and talented writers. It’s also about expecting more, and motivating writers to expect more of themselves.

If you think it’s hard getting a rejection letter, try sending them out by the hundreds. Help all of us, write to the very best of your ability, constantly push to expand your ability and give us the gems that we’re looking for. With that, everyone wins.

I thank you for this. Writing is awesome but submitting and querying SUCK. The best people and the ones I like to submit to are the ones who give very specific guidelines (not just “We are seeking things that move us deeply”–what is THAT supposed to mean?!), who take the time to point out those common mistakes, and who steer us newbies to resources that allow us to improve our submissions. What better way to upgrade your slush pile?

Hopefully we writers who take these suggestions and better our craft will have our efforts noted.

However.

I do think they could be nicer about it. No quoting. Just “please check word lengths before sending” or something…

I think the bigger problem with public slushing, though, is the people who are reading the agents’ streams, etc, would have done the kind of homework that gets mocked, so it can’t be much of an education, can it? Unless you’ve just wandered onto the internet recently, but then everything is a kind of education. So for me perhaps the problem is less that these people should know better and more that they can’t, and so who’s benefiting, really?

I supported Michelle Wolfson (yes, Bob, you do remember her name) because frankly I thought Bob had too big of an attitude to be doing anything truly nice, but he is right at the core: it is mean. I’ve since changed my tune about that, though I’m not unfollowing anybody because of it.

Ignore snarkers. Let the snark hang out there, without response, like a bully’s joke getting no courtesy laughs or wimpy stammerins rebuttals. The worst thing you can do is react like Bob did– get in the trenches with some peon and “stand up to the snarker.”

Pro writers don’t have time to deal with the petty musings of self-righteous volunteer slush-drones. The rest of us can at least act like we don’t either.

On the other hand, if writers are going to be taken seriously as, well, writers, they need to demonstrate that they should be able to write, and write well. I can see people’s frustration as being rejected for spelling errors, typos and other mistakes, but there is a good reason for looking over one’s work, having beta readers or even running a comprehensive spellcheck on the thing.