![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
Riddell’s Law:
Writers find interesting ways to deal with the continuous stream of rejection slips that arrive on their doorstep, in envelopes they bought and stamped themselves. Some make little origami boats and hold races with their imaginary friends. Others build bonfires and dance naked around them, trying to make it rain in New York. Still others take the old adage too literally and actually try to wallpaper their spare room. And that’s where their relatives find them, sometimes years later.
But the worst, most dangerous ones collect rejections in precisely organised folders, after the slips are analysed for fingerprints, hidden ciphers and tracking dots. They maintain files on each editor and agent, complete with address details, long-distance snapshots and the GPS coordinates of their office and mother’s house.
They are the conspiracy theorists.
They don’t read submission guidelines, but boy, can they read things into “not right for us”.
They believe that agents and editors have the time and inclination to develop shared blacklists of authors who are “too radical” for the publishing world. They write impassioned scrawls on the back of the rejection slips about why the rejecter is wrong, on every count, and are obviously incapable of understanding the “laytent genies of theyre storie”.
They cite poorly researched, inflammatory “stings” like the London Times conducted earlier this year, and Time Magazine 27 years ago, as evidence of the publishing industry’s endemic incompetence (Of course they’ve never read Miss Snark’s rebuttal).
Yeah, agents and editors have it in for new writers, and spend their days gleefully composing viciously subtle and obtuse rejection letters intended to eviscerate the ego with the razor of faint praise.
Of course, Microsoft, the Post Office, the cable guy and you and I are all part of the conspiracy. They blame anyone and anything for their failure, except their own craptacularity.
There are exactly three reasons why your submission was rejected:
If you have ever interpreted another reason from a rejection, you’re a conspiracy theorist. Stop writing.
Some agents and editors do maintain their own, personal “auto-reject” lists of suspected conspiracy theorists. If you’ve ever replied to a rejection with anything other than “Thanks for your time,” you’re on the list.
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The problem is that most of these paranoiacs think that they’re the star in some literary reprise of The Prisoner. Actually, they need a quote from the The Prisoner crossover fanfiction that dare not speak its name: “Uhhhh…like, Number One is full of Number Two. Huh huh huh huh.”
For an example of why conspiracy theorists shouldn’t be allowed near a computer, see The Rejecter versus a POD author.
That’s a creepy, discomfiting glimpse into the psyche of a truly bad writer. You may have to read something from Penguin Classics just to wash it out.
One of my all-time favorite sayings is, “Just because nobody understands you, it doesn’t mean you’re a genius.”
Don’t know who coined that one, but I wish I had.
Ahhhh, memories of the Scot Snow imbroglio abound
Short version: i rejected his story. He blogged about how I was an idiot who didn’t realise what a genius he was, and how it was okay because Argosy had received it and gone “absolutely bugfuck” for it, so he was going to get a nice fat cheque and yah-boo sux to my little rag, several friends read this, I got emails, I blogged a response.
Argosy, of course, were closed to submissions, and the editor happily visited scot’s LJ to say this when Scot’s post was pointed out to him. As did several other editors who were mentioned in the post and who had not received the stories scot mentioned. People started digging. People started posting. Scot’s entire bibliography was dissasembled, lie by lie.
Scot now plays guitar for a crust….