Spanking of the Week
Is it just me? Or have literary magazines become, how shall we say, crazy? Last week I got a slip of paper from the North American Review. What I like about NAR is that they send you a postcard verifying that they received your submission and assigning it a number (sort of like at the deli counter, only you never get luncheon meats or cheeses). Anyhoo that's well and good.
What's not well and good is that the second part: the slip of paper I received, was the front page of my story, with a number written just below my word count. I thought they were telling me my story's word count was wrong. My word count was 4990 and the number they had written below was 3995. So I double-checked. Nope, my word count was right. Then I remembered the assigned number thing and put two and two together. They'd written that number on my page. Okay.
There was nothing else in the envelope. No tiny scrap of paper saying, "Sorry. Not for us" or "We liked it, but not this time. Please keep us in mind." Nothing. I'm not saying I crave rejection, but I do like the process to be simple, to be obvious. Even a big old "NO" in red pen across the top would've been better. Are literary magazines so tired of rejecting pieces that they've stopped sending rejection notices?
Comments
As someone who've edited a magazine before, I would say, it could've been an accident. My guess is the rejections slip was supposed to be there, but someone has made a mistake. Then again, who knows, maybe they've done away with rejection slips altogether...
Posted by: Ellen | July 24, 2007 08:13 AM