Criticism

I got a rejection Saturday. Not something new, but this one was a personalized response, which are pretty rare even in these days of e-subs and e-replys. The editor enjoyed the suspense and mystery of it (The story I sent in was 'Roaming'), but felt that the writing itself needed some tightening. I've been pretty much pounding back and forth on 'In the Dark' and 'The Red Man Burning,' so I haven't even scribbled on a short for a while. But I pulled up the version that I sent in and took a look at it.

I have a quiet reaction to criticism. On one hand, this is an opinion from one of my primary targets, but on the other, if I didn't think the damn thing was perfect I wouldn't have sent it in. I write for the reader, but it's the editor who makes the decision to toss money at me, or not. When you go looking for advice on writing, you find there's an endless supply of it. But one bit that I found by Marion Zimmer Bradley more or less smacked me in the head when I read it. As it settled in to become a permanent note in my mental book, it also reduced my sense of humor about this business by just another fraction. Without quoting too much of it, because that's called violating a copyright, the sentence that was printed in big, bold script said basically this: Editors don't buy good stories, they buy stories that they think their readers will pay to read.

Take as long as you need for that to settle in. It's still settling in for me, and I read it months ago. That doesn't just add another hoop for you to jump through in order to get your work on someone else's paper. That means you need to churn out a finished product that will please one person, and then go on to please the final audience. You need to please the readers themselves because they are the ones who will end up spending money on your piece in the magazine, and who will later see your name and buy the next magazine, or your book. But they will never see your story unless you first defeat the editor. In a perfect world, the editor has the exact same taste as the readers. Guess which world we live in.

Here's the article, and I owe a debt to Ms. Bradley for it.

http://www.mzbworks.com/why.htm

When I re-read 'Roaming' I did see some places where the editor may have been on the money. He said that the writing itself needed to be tightened up, so I'm going through and cleaning out anything that might be ambiguous, or repetitious.

So I'll rewrite it, and send it in again.