{"id":3164,"date":"2025-04-22T13:35:05","date_gmt":"2025-04-22T13:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/?p=3164"},"modified":"2025-04-22T13:39:02","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T13:39:02","slug":"the-nicest-rejection-ive-ever-received","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/the-nicest-rejection-ive-ever-received\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nicest Rejection I\u2019ve Ever Received"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I try to keep as many of my short stories as I can out on submission. I have a fair backlog of unpublished tales now, so any time I hear of an interesting call for anthology submissions, I consider if any of my stories might fit the request. Sometimes the call itself will spark a story idea.<\/p>\n

As anyone who has seriously pursued a writing career knows, lots of submissions means lots of rejections. I\u2019d venture that in the short story world maybe one in ten of the stories I submit is accepted. So, yes, lots of rejections. You learn to deal with it, or you find another line of work. I\u2019ve developed ways to deal.<\/p>\n

Which doesn\u2019t mean the rejections don\u2019t sting sometimes. The curt \u201cthis isn\u2019t for us\u201d is pretty neutral and bites but doesn\u2019t dig the knife in. Sometimes you\u2019ll get an insulting or irritating reply of the \u201cYou suck and don\u2019t ever darken our slush pile again\u201d variety.<\/p>\n

But I recently got one that said, among other things: \u201cYour assured writing and intriguing concept pulled us in with this one, but in the end we felt that it didn’t quite fit the needs of the magazine, so we have decided to pass on it. We wish you the very best of luck in placing your story elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wow! Still a rejection, but the nicest one I\u2019ve ever received. Takes some of the bite out of it, for sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I try to keep as many of my short stories as I can out on submission. I have a fair backlog of unpublished tales now, so any time I hear of an interesting call for anthology submissions, I consider if …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,204],"tags":[226],"class_list":["post-3164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","category-writing","tag-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3167,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3164\/revisions\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}