{"id":5480,"date":"2016-05-12T04:24:30","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T11:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=5480"},"modified":"2016-05-12T04:24:30","modified_gmt":"2016-05-12T11:24:30","slug":"literary-agent-mary-c-moore-has-personal-experience-with-the-rejection-form","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/literary-agent-mary-c-moore-has-personal-experience-with-the-rejection-form\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary Agent Mary C. Moore has personal experience with The Rejection Form"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mary<\/a>Guest Blogger Mary C. Moore (literary agent) writes about the rejection form letter.<\/p>\n

I recently wrote a short story, my first in over a year. Inspiration struck and I listened.<\/p>\n

Unlike novel writing, short stories are short-term rewarding because you reach \u201cthe end,\u201d while you are still loving that muse whispering in your ear. I was particularly excited about this story, as I knew exactly which magazine I was going to submit it to. A few years ago, said magazine had rejected another story of mine, but with glowing praise and a request to see more of my work. I kept that in mind, because this magazine is a professionally paying market and one that would be quite a feather in my writing resume. Thus after some furious late nights, anxious waiting for the beta reads to come back, and a lot of editing, I sent off my beautiful 3k-word gem to this magazine.
\nAnother rather sweet aspect of short stories is these days most magazines use submission software. This means you can stalk, I mean track, your submissions. And, at least in the SciFi\/Fantasy professional market, many of them have fairly quick turn around times. This is in part because they don\u2019t allow simultaneous subs in part because the stories are shorter. Altogether it\u2019s a much quicker and less frustrating process than novel submissions.<\/p>\n

So a week full of checking the website later, there it was, that email. I took a deep breath and opened it to find\u2026 a form rejection letter.<\/p>\n

The range of emotions that followed is one every writer is familiar with. But there was one more.<\/p>\n

Understanding. Working for a literary agency, I\u2019ve sent out hundreds of form rejection letters over the years. And recently I opened up my own inbox to queries. In the beginning I tried to make each response a bit personal, a note here, a comment there. I knew what it was like to be on the other side, and that experience pushed me to communicate personally as much as I could, especially if the writing had potential. However, I discovered, to my dismay, that the majority of personal rejections were not appreciated, in fact they were often responded to with a \u201ccould you clarify this?\u201d or \u201ccan you take this further?\u201d or \u201cwhat can I edit to change your mind?\u201d<\/p>\n

My personal notes were not received as the compliments they were meant to be, but rather as an opening for an editorial conversation. One that I had to ignore. It made me feel guilty, not continuing the conversations, but there is not enough time in an agent\u2019s schedule to answer every author question that floats through our inbox. I was also spending more time coming up with ways to make the reason I was passing on the project sound nice and encouraging and editorially useful, rather than focusing my energy on considering each submission carefully. Which made me reluctant to open my inbox. I had burned out. Thus more and more I found myself responding with a form rejection, both in the interest of time and clear communication. My defense of the form rejection:<\/p>\n

\u2022 It\u2019s a clear answer.
\n\u2022 You receive said answer faster.
\n\u2022 It\u2019s less emotional.
\n\u2022 It helps prevent slushpile burnout, so the agent\/reader can focus on what\u2019s important, considering the submission itself, rather than coming up with something to say in response to it.
\n\u2022 The form rejection helps to keep expectations in check.<\/p>\n

I know most authors who don\u2019t do their research don\u2019t understand this, because they don\u2019t see the other side. I can\u2019t count the number of times I\u2019ve heard writers say, \u201cit couldn\u2019t be that hard to respond to a query!\u201d Let me tell you, yes, yes it can.<\/p>\n

Every once in a while, if the writing jumps out at me, or if I\u2019ve met the author in person, I will still respond personally, but for the most part I\u2019ve become a fan of the form rejection. Sure you could argue that if I hadn\u2019t gotten that personal response back in the day, I wouldn\u2019t have been as eager to submit to the magazine, but I also wouldn\u2019t have had as high of hopes. At least you can take comfort in the knowledge that I\u2019m getting them as good as I\u2019m giving them. We all just have to keep on keeping on. My so-called gem of a short story is already sunk into another slushpile.<\/p>\n

Originally posted 1\/4\/16, “In Defense of the Form Rejection,” on Mary C. Moore’s Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mary will be the Writers Forum<\/a> presenter on May 19, 2016<\/p>\n

Mary C. Moore <\/a>has been with Kimberley Cameron & Associates<\/a> since 2012. Mary specializes in science fiction and fantasy, although she does appreciate a wide breadth of the literary canon. She started reading at an early age, and her love of reading continued, as she earned her B.S. in biology from the University of California San Diego. She was a veterinarian’s assistant, then a field biologist, and then a zookeeper.<\/p>\n

Mary’s passion for writing and books caused her to veer off her original path and drew her to publishing. She graduated from Mills College, Oakland with an MFA in Creative Writing and English and after freelancing for two years as an editor and writer in non-literary sectors, she began an internship with Kimberley Cameron & Associates and found she loved working as a literary agent as much as she loved writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Blogger Mary C. Moore (literary agent) writes about the rejection form letter. I recently wrote a short story, my first in over a year. Inspiration struck and I listened. Unlike novel writing, short stories are short-term rewarding because you reach \u201cthe end,\u201d while you are still loving that muse whispering in your ear. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[929,928,343],"class_list":["post-5480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-kimberley-cameron-associates","tag-mary-c-moore","tag-writers-forum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-1qo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5480"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5487,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5480\/revisions\/5487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}