Rejectomancy

18-day kablooey from EQMM, maintaining my perfect record of rejection by pro-paying markets.

pdichellis said:

18-day kablooey from EQMM, maintaining my perfect record of rejection by pro-paying markets.

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At least they were mercifully quick. Hitchcock form rejections can take nearly a year!

Speaking of long wait times for rejections, I have to kind of laugh when I look at the Tor.com submissions on Grinder. I have a piece that's been with them for 156 days. Two weeks ago I saw a bunch of rejections in the 140s and figured I would hear back soon. Last week there was a batch of rejections in the 150-day range. This week it's 160! I'm never gonna hear back if their backlog always somehow grows by 10 days. lol

DetectiveFork said:

I did find that there is a creative writing critique group that meets a couple of times a month not too far from where I live. I'm working my way up to joining it, but have to get past my anxiety of showing my work to that many people. Also need to make the time.

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Even if you can't physically join a critique group, you should definitely have virtual CPs. Especially if you're having trouble or aren't getting feedback. You need people who are also publication minded and familiar with the process and standards of publication, otherwise how do you even know you're on track? Something to think about!

DetectiveFork said:

Speaking of long wait times for rejections, I have to kind of laugh when I look at the Tor.com submissions on Grinder. I have a piece that's been with them for 156 days. Two weeks ago I saw a bunch of rejections in the 140s and figured I would hear back soon. Last week there was a batch of rejections in the 150-day range. This week it's 160! I'm never gonna hear back if their backlog always somehow grows by 10 days. lol

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Same here. I'm at 163 days and keep thinking, "Oh, good, I should get that response sometime this week..."

DetectiveFork said:

At least they were mercifully quick. Hitchcock form rejections can take nearly a year! lol

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True. My AHMM rejections have run just under 300 days, but I've seen several (Duotrope and Grinder) well over 300.

But I think the mystery market champ for excruciating waits is Woman's World (pays $500 for solve-it-yourself flash mysteries, MWA approved market). Response times there range from six months to never. I resubbed one after 300 days and it's sitting at nearly two months the second time around. Got another one there at almost 150 days.

And here's the kicker: Everything to/from WW goes via snail mail/SASE only, with no Duo/Grinder stats, so no clue about Received, In Progress, Queue Position, Recent Responses, etc. Whew! Maybe the biggest mystery is why I submit there.

DetectiveFork said:

No, but I know I should. How much of a time commitment do you find it to be?

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Hey DetectiveFork, sent you a long private message so as not to clutter the forum.

Form rejected at SH after 65 days. You'd think they'd at least give me something after keeping it 25 days longer than they were supposed to. :/

CL_Hilbert said:

Form rejected at SH after 65 days. You'd think they'd at least give me something after keeping it 25 days longer than they were supposed to. :/

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I think this is the new norm, sadly, based on all the 60-70 day form rejections I'm seeing on the Grinder. Sorry, CL. :-( And Vintager, your PM was most appreciated!

Last night, I got a 50-day form rejection from Strange Horizons (at least from one of the main editors) and a 10-day form rejection from Betwixt. And now both are temporarily closed to submissions.

Aggy B. said:

A lot of markets will temporarily close through December. I always use it as an opportunity to reorganize and possibly revise anything that's not out on submission.

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Definitely good advice!

58-day raspberry from horror/dark humor anthology. Micro humor list about grave robbing "not what we're looking for." But was it at least funny, I wonder.

Best wishes,
Peter

Another R, and damn, I feel so thoroughly discouraged.

JJ Litke said:

Another R, and damn, I feel so thoroughly discouraged.

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I'm right there with you. We all are. At least in this thread.

It helps to not be alone.

Boo. Sorry to hear it, JJ.

I've settled in for probably a long-ish and definitely long wait since I subbed to Lightspeed's POC Destroy SF issue and Tor.com. Trying to focus on writing book 2 for the pub, so hopefully I'll forget about it completely. Really don't have any other shorts I can send out w/o going through and revising so. Oh and that McSweeney's sub from April 2014 could someday come back, I guess... and also don't believe.

I'm sitting at 58 days for Strange Horizons...I'm sure the R will show up any day now. Sorry to hear about the R, Detective.

I've got a story out at Tor.com, so that one will be a while.

Resubbed my piece to SH (they did ask for it). Hopefully they like the changes etc etc, but given the times I'm seeing with responses etc, I think I'm just going to put it out of mind till they email me

_Sian_ said:

Resubbed my piece to SH (they did ask for it). Hopefully they like the changes etc etc, but given the times I'm seeing with responses etc, I think I'm just going to put it out of mind till they email me

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I've been wondering how you were doing with that. How did you manage to cut back the length while increasing the world-building? Now that SH is closed to submissions, maybe their response times will pick up. Fingers still crossed for you!

44-Day form rejection from Triptych Tales. I had high hopes for this one, as most rejections come within a few days from them. Most rejections that make it further seem to get personal rejections, but no such luck with this one.

DetectiveFork said:

I've been wondering how you were doing with that. How did you manage to cut back the length while increasing the world-building? Now that SH is closed to submissions, maybe their response times will pick up. Fingers still crossed for you!

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Originally the reason for one of the characters doing what they were doing was a lot more complicated, so I made that a bit more straightforward - that cut out some need for explanation. And I basically started the story with more cues as to time and place and had a bit more explanation conveyed through character a's annoyance at the actions of character b. So an extra paragraph of exposition, lots more cutting just re normal editing (i'd repeated myself sometimes, gotten a bit wordy in others). Some scenes were easier to trim the fat from than others.

Five-day form from Uncanny. I had a WIP I'd planned to submit, but ran out of time before the window closed. I subbed another which has gotten a lot of nice Rs (but I knew was a terrible fit for Uncanny), and yup. At least I tried!

Peace
Ty

It was worth a shot, Ty! I think we've all discussed this before, but I don't know how to interpret submission data from Uncanny. I have a story that's been with them for 41 days. But I see recent form rejections from them ranging anywhere from 3 days to 63 days, with scattered personals in-between. So I'm not getting my hopes up.

Sian, I'm glad to hear the re-edit went well. The way you describe it, it sounds like it might have actually served the story well in the end. I really hope I'll be reading it soon in the virtual pages of SH.

Thanks for the empathy, Evelyn! Those rejections smart, some more than others. I've still got one out at Tor.com, now at 172 days. I'm pretty positive it won't make it, so at least it won't be a surprise. I haven't seen data from Tor since the end of November. Maybe they do their reading in waves. Good luck with yours, and yes, patience is a must.

DetectiveFork said:

It was worth a shot, Ty! I think we've all discussed this before, but I don't know how to interpret submission data from Uncanny. I have a story that's been with them for 41 days. But I see recent form rejections from them ranging anywhere from 3 days to 63 days, with scattered personals in-between. So I'm not getting my hopes up.

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The opening and closing of windows seems to affect it; I know the last time they closed they basically just stopped reading slush as soon as they got what they needed (leaving many dozens of stories, including one of mine, orphaned). I queried, and got a variation on the usual form, apologizing for the delay and including the line "We hope you'll consider submitting again when we re-open for submissions in early September." This also came from managing editor Michi Trota, rather than a submissions editor.

The super-fast form I just got is identical to my first sub there, and from the submissions editor. No line asking me to submit again in the next window, so it's clearly the lowest level. *shrug*

I guess what I'm saying is, there may be two separate piles going right now? As you say, it's really tough to interpret.

Peace
Ty