Nearly 80 and Rejections

No. The title does not relate to how old I might be feeling. I'm actually feeling rather well at the moment. Let's hope that lasts.

"Nearly 80"  refers to the number of stories I've read over the past seven days, while being Guest Editor at the wonderful Smokelong Quarterly. I enjoyed it enormously, mostly, because the majority of those stories were really, really good, if not excellent. Which makes picking a winner very difficult. You will have to wait until the middle of next month to see which I picked.

What I wanted to say though - and this is An Important Thing, for any writer - is that even really excellent stories get rejected and being rejected isn't necessarily a reflection of a story's quality. Sometimes, of course, it is - and that's an easy thing to fix: keep writing and keep improving. But what to say to the writers of good stuff that, despite it being good has been rejected? Mostly: don't take it personally. Look for potential new homes for it and accept that, sometimes, it's not what an editor's looking for. Simple as that.

Of course, you should look at your story again and see if it can be improved, whether or not you've achieved what you wanted to achieve with it. And you should probably call the person who rejected it an idiot. I'm fine with that.

But don't, whatever you do, give up.

Someone said to me once that 'getting rejections means you're a writer' and they were right.

So, thanks to all who sent things in and I'm sorry if I've disappointed people in rejecting them. But at least I know that everyone I did say 'no' to is a writer. And that can't be too bad a thing, surely...!