I'm an Odd One

For those of you who've been following me a while, this will not be a surprise. Let's face it. I've shown my oddity a few times. However, for those who might have recently stumbled upon this site and the nutcase that runs it, it might be a surprise.

Today, you get a bonus stolen comment because I was writing up a comment to Shakespeare's blog and I couldn't wait to tell all my adoring fans [insert the sounds of crickets here] this story about myself. Largely because it is quintessential, well, me.

For those of you who didn't read my "about me" bit, I write fiction and have since I was a kid. Like most people who write fiction and aren't handing out autographs (i.e. wildly successful/famous) - and many that are - I have could paper a wall with rejection letters. Almost always, form rejection letters give the rejectee not a shred of information on why the rejection happened, how close it came to being accepted yada yada yada.

Basically, all you know is that someone in the business didn't think your stuff would suit their publication, which is depressing enough a thought without not knowing why. However, I'm a reasonable person and realized that it wasn't reasonable to expect publishers, often receiving dozens if not hundred hopeful missives a week (and I've read enough out there to be able to guess the average quality) to expect them to reasonably send an individual rejection letter to all supplicants.

So I had an idea. I'm not saying it was a good idea, but, being me, I did it anyway. With the next short story I sent (I think I was peddling short stories then), I provided two form letters to save the recipient time. First was a letter accepting the work:

□Your work is collosal, stupendous! I love it! Here's some money! Send me more!
□ I guess it wasn't too bad. Just this once, I'll accept it but expect to do some work on it, and the quality better improve or you won't be around long.

The second was a letter of rejection, but with some quick check boxes so that I'd have some idea why they rejected it.

□This wasn't too bad but it didn't quite meet our needs at this particular time. Perhaps you could polish it up a bit more and try again later.
□This had potential but it was too (circle all that apply) unpolished, lengthy, short, full of dialog, funny, dull, long-winded, boring, amateurish. See if you can fix that(those) problem(s) and you just might have something.
□Did you even read about the stuff we normally buy? This has nothing to do with our market.
□ I didn't even bother to read it because of a technical nono like a typo or using the wrong font/paper.
□Perhaps you should pursue a different line of work.
□ I wouldn't use this to line my birdcage. It will take weeks to wipe the images from my mind.

For those wondering if I really sent those out (or something similar - I recreated them from memory), yes, yes I did. I hoped that they would either be taken as useful by someone or (even better) an editor with a sense of humor would appreciate them and I would have found the editor for me (since much of what I write is humorous).

Did it work? No. I never saw a single one of those letters back. I did get a couple of their standard form rejection letters back but no offers and no one bothered with my letters. Oh well, I'm not sorry I did it. Better to get a hundred rejections and find the right editor than be grudgingly accepted by an editor who just doesn't get you. Or, so I thought at the time.

To be honest, I haven't been tempted recently to repeat the experiment.