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| SFReader Forums > Book, Magazine, and eZine Publishers > Editor's Roundtable > If you've decided to reject a story... now what do you do? | Forum Quick Jump
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crystalwizard
Forum Moderator
      
Date Joined Nov 2006
Total Posts : 4607
| Posted 10/21/2007 11:08 PM (GMT -4) |   | Do you ever think 'this could be good' and then work with the author until you can accept it?
Do you ever think 'man i'm in a bad mood, now. Let's put the little snot that did this to me through XXXXXX!!!' and proceed to send a rejection letter calculated to leave the author in a quivering pile of jelly?
Do you do something in between?
What do you do once you've gotten to the point of 'I don't want this.' | | Back to Top | | |
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MysticWino
anarchist fringe monkey boddhisatva
Date Joined May 2007
Total Posts : 1570
| Posted 10/22/2007 10:51 PM (GMT -4) | |
crystalwizard said...
Do you ever think 'this could be good' and then work with the author until you can accept it?
Numerous times, yes.
Do you ever think 'man i'm in a bad mood, now. Let's put the little snot that did this to me through XXXXXX!!!' and proceed to send a rejection letter calculated to leave the author in a quivering pile of jelly? Only half-way. I think about the vitriolic, humiliating response - even write the email half the time that I'm really irked at the waste of reading time; but I never send a knee-jerk kick to the ego. It has to remane impersonal on the downside and human on the upside. Even if it's only for the purpose of dealing with my own issues. I don't think of myself, very often anyway, of being so original as to have proprietary ego issues. It's just a lousy person who takes a bad mood out on another living being (but keep the hollow walls out of reach - I hate fixing drywall, but I'm pretty damned good at it by now!)
Do you do something in between? Have a coke and a smile and shut the puck up! (Usually lacing the Coke with cheapass bourbon)
What do you do once you've gotten to the point of 'I don't want this.' Usually I ignore it until it goes away or until it itches enough that I have to get antibiotic ointment; seriously, though, it's time to send a polite "bugger off will ya" to the poor sot who decided to ignore my really liberal guidelines.
And then there are times I'm just in such an obnoxious mood that I write defamatory and inflamatory remarks all over the manuscript and mail it to the wrong author just for spits and grins!
Joking. I would only dream of doing that. I can't actually afford the postage. But it's worth a laugh. I do the marking, but then I come back to it a week or more later to see if I was being a jerk or just judicious with an edge. It's a pretty even split so far. A couple of poems and one story stand out for me as rejects I later adopted and workshopped, but nothing from the 'merde n demsum' pile ever got published "as is".
Literarily speaking: More prolific than sin!
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MysticWino
anarchist fringe monkey boddhisatva
Date Joined May 2007
Total Posts : 1570
| Posted 10/23/2007 8:51 PM (GMT -4) | | That all sounds like a great time to me . . . except the part about being a teenage girl, that thought gives me the heebie-jeebies 
You only kick the ones with one good hip - it's only sporting! I am a terrible editor; I edit terribles all the time. I'm a terrible writer, too; I usually even spell it correctly: terrible, terrible, terrible . . . terrible . . . Terrible . . .REALLY SUCKS (I even do it in vernacular, or whatever language these miscreants use these days.
Jordan Lapp said...LOL! It was some teenage writer from Kentucky that thought we shouldn't have rejected her story because it was "perfectly good", and that therefore we were terrible editors, terrible writers, and we must make special trips to the retirement home so we can kick old people.
Hermit said...Uh. Yeah. Sorry 'bout that. Won't happen again.
Jordan Lapp said...We've rejected over 700(?) pieces so far and only had one immature response so far. We're going to keep going with the personalized rejections until things get much rougher.
Literarily speaking: More prolific than sin!
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