Got a Rejection

What a crap day. I played full court basketball for the first time in a year today, didn't play well, got completely exhausted, hurt my leg a bit, and felt quite old.

I noticed that my right front tire is very low on air pressure when I got home (maybe a slow leak, don't know yet) and found that my portable air compressor had a dead battery. Hopefully I can get it recharged in time to pump up the tire to take the kids to school tomorrow.

My neighbors who had asked me to watch/feed their six pets on Friday then revealed that they needed me to be taking care of them Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

Then, right as I was getting ready for bed, while doing something else on the computer, two new emails arrived, one of which was a rejection for my flash fiction story "The Cold Portions" from Flash Fiction.

You might recall that my first submission to them got a very positively worded rejection email.

This one was a little simpler and much less helpful. "Unfortunately, I'm going to pass on The Cold Portions."

I felt pretty proud of this story and I have to admit I'm surprised as well as disappointed at the rejection and the utter lack of interest it conveyed.

2010 sucks so far and it's not like 2009 had raised the bar particularly high.

Rejection was never so sweet

So I got my first rejection letter today via email from one of the editors at the online publisher Flash Fiction for the piece Tinkertoy Genii (specifically the version I recently posted). Flash Fiction specializes in stories of 1,000 words or less.

I have to say, for a rejection it was one of the nicest communiques I've ever gotten from a stranger. Here's an excerpt:

"For a previously unpublished fiction writer, your writing is excellent, the storyline fascinating, the details believable, the conflict gripping."

Now, as it turns out, I didn't resolve the main conflict in the story in the very short word count available, and the editor kindly pointed this out in rejecting it. Can't really argue with that, to be honest, and you'll notice it if you take the time to read the story. Flash Fiction is a tricky format and I'm a novice.

On the bright side, the editor closed with this encouragement:

"While I can't accept "Tinkertoy Genii" I sincerely hope you will continue writing and submitting and studying the craft of flash fiction writing as I truly believe it is valuable in honing a writer's all-around skills. I look forward, as well, to receiving more submissions from you in the future."

I have a couple other ideas that I've written up as rather clunky vignettes that might work in the Flash Fiction format, so I'm going to give those a go in the near future while working on the Illyria novel.

Anyway, after several days of being sidetracked with other work or getting stuck on setting issues, I sat down this morning and wrote 2,000 words for the second chapter and got this pretty positive rejection letter, so I'm feeling much better than I was at this time yesterday.