Thanks for the encouragement, really!JAGzilla wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 2:31 am ^ Hey, even if you are getting rejected, at least you're trying. That's what counts. You're making the effort and you have the confidence to put your work out there and go somewhere with it. I assume you get some kind of feedback when your stories get rejected, right? Constructive criticism so you understand where you went wrong?
Actually, big places and publications (like clarkesworld) don’t provide any feedback whatsoever. Most small publications and literary publications don’t either. All of this is due to the fact that writing short stories for a living and profit is nigh impossible, but easy to do. Anyone can pick up a pen and paper (or in our modern era a type writer) and submit stories, so the competition is high. Most publications have like a 2% acceptance rate.
It’s okay though: I don’t think I do things “wrong” at this point. Some peers of mine, who I highly respect, are entertained my stories, and I like them, so that’s good enough. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way, just that I’m personally satisfied with my output, and I only send editors semi-finalized versions; everything I send has intent behind it.
I am always curious why I was rejected. There’s publications that editors have specific tastes and interests, even behind genre, so I always want to know why they rejected it, even if it’s something like a grammar mistake.
Oh well. At the very least I won’t lose motivation on this any time soon.
