If you’re writing to be published, chances are you’ve suffered from some form of this mental condition. We’ve all gone through it, we’ve all caught it–some just show more virulent symptoms than others. We send out a story. It comes back with a rejection. It can be the dreaded form rejection, or it can be the encouraging personal rejection–also dreaded, because these can be even more confusing.
Then we drive ourselves nuts trying to guess why the story got rejected. This was to be the pinnacle of our writing career! The editor must have macular degeneration and have been three sheets to the wind! What other explanation is there? Oh. Maybe, just maybe, they left us an explanation, hidden secretly in their brief words. Ken Liu talked about this at Norwescon this year. He called the condition Rejectomancy. Let me get my notes. Hm. A place for everything and everything misplaced. Ah. Here it is under a tube filled with nautical maps of the San Juan Islands. Obviously! Okay, here we go! Continue reading “Reject Rejectomancy!”