Early on I understood that if you are going to be a writer you will get more rejections than acceptances--until you hit the big time, after that you can throw anything out there and some established writers, sadly, do just that. So, when rejection letters were sent by mail, I used to pin them up on the wall of my bedroom, until I ran out of wall space.
For the most part, the rejections I received early on had more to do with improper formatting, sending stuff to the wrong market, or other such newbie mistakes. Now, most of my rejections happen because the editor doesn't see the work as a good fit for their publication aka, they hate the stuff. I am fine with that. Everyone has their opinions with editors having more than most...
However, sometimes I get a rejection that brings out the monster in me (that is me in the picture above); one such dismissal came a few days ago from a publisher who is putting together an anthology for stories about strange behaviors that happen under the influence of a full moon. As I read the submission requirements, I thought that they were demanding that I send in my story, There's A Monster In The Bathroom!. To me, the story was a perfect fit for what they needed since the monster in question is a werewolf even though the story is not the usual werewolf type tale.
Well, they loved it! This is what they wrote in their email to me: "Thank you so much for sending us "There's a Monster in the Bathroom". We enjoyed this immensely, and you have a fabulous writing voice. It was a fast-paced, fun read that was easy to get lost in. It's a story we considered very seriously for inclusion in our anthology."
Then they rejected it.
This is hardly the first time this has happened but I was never so confident of an acceptance of a story before I sent this one off so the rejection was just that much harder to take.
Now if they HATED the story, I would have felt much better.
For about 10 years I published an online e-zine called, The Earth Comes First! and if I liked what you sent me, it was published because I wanted my readers to get the same enjoyment for the work as I did.
It just seemed like the logical thing to do but I may be alone with that editorial position.