Letting you down easy

I feel like I should say something about the rejection letter from Knitty.

I’ve sent out a story to a few magazines, and received a few rejection letters. I understand — I really do — that a lot of magazines out there don’t have huge editorial staffs, but a form rejection letter still really stings. It’s like the magazine is saying, not only do we not think your writing is up to our standards, but we don’t even think it’s worth inserting your name and the title of your work into a mail-merge document. The more personalized the rejection letter is, the easier it is to accept (especially when they put in something positive about your work), and the more likely I am to consider that magazine again if I have something else I think is worthy of publication.

Amy Singer gives good rejection. (Yeah, yeah, that sounds weird and bad but sometimes I can’t help myself.) If I come up with something else that I think will be appropriate for Knitty, I’ll happily send it their way (and try very hard to remember just how long it takes to hear back, because even though they tell you in the submission guidelines how long it will be, you don’t realize just how long that is until you’ve still got two months to wait).

Tags: designing, knitting, yammer