A Nice Rejection

I received a nice rejection for my story "Taste of Darkness" on Friday from an anthology I'd submitted a story to several months ago. It'd been a while that the story was sitting in their hands, which can sometimes be a good thing. I know when I'm reading submissions, the story either jumps out as an instant "Gotta buy this one", an instant "No, sorry, not my type" or a "Hmm, this was good -- gotta read it again. Let me put this aside to read again later." Based on the editor's comments, I think my story sat in that final category.

Getting writing rejections reminds me of what my dating life had been before I finally tricked Francine into marrying me in the late 90's. For years I'd amassed all of these wonderful nice date rejections. You know, the standard "You're a nice guy. Let's be friends" -- that was always preferable to a "Get out of my face you slob - I hate you!" It's the same things with story rejections. I always prefer a rejection in which the editor comments what it was about the story that didn't work for them or they didn't like -- it's much better than a form letter. That's on par with a girl not returning your phone call, I guess.

It's funny, when all you get is rejections, you start compiling them into categories where you see some of them as "nice" rejections. Pretty pathetic, perhaps, and maybe only a fellow writer can understand that, but at least there is a such thing as a nice rejection.

I never let rejections get me down (okay, so maybe once in a while I let them get me down). But I do try my best to dust myself off and send my story to another editor for consideration. I'll be doing that with "Taste of Darkness" -- I'm sure one day I'll find it a good home, a Francine to love it.