Rejectomancy, or, Derek tries to make a tweet thread again.

I've been thinking for a while about handling rejection. It's obviously like a core competency of being a writer, along with being able to learn from what you read, deconstruct story and take pictures of cats. 1/15

My writing career has been basically very steady, with some improvements each year since about 2005 (the year before I sold my first story). But because people might not have seen you struggle, there's always the chance that they look... 2/15

...now and just say "Wow! He came out of nowhere! My career is too slow." The emphasize a bit, my first sale *at all* was 14 years ago, and I'd started writing 20 years before that. *I'm* slow. But, even having gotten to some success, I of course still get... 3/15

...rejected. And I have receipts! Here's Exhibit A. My rejections from Clarkesworld. There's a lot to unpack here... 4/15

To put things in context, I sold a story to Asimov's in 2008 and thought I'd hit the big time. You can see the bottom of the list, I'm struggling with Clarkesworld with every single story. And more than a couple of those are legit... 5/15

...rejections that told me I had to keep learning. I never found a home for "The Sultan's Tribute Collector" nor "The Beetle Harems of Mars" and the other stories had a few more drafts. But here's the interesting thing: A bunch of those stories weren't rejected because.... 6/15

...they weren't good stories. They weren't right for Clarkesworld. I was listening to CW stories at the time, as I was listening to BCS stories and Lightspeed stories, trying to figure out which editorial voice I fit into. But many of those stories... 7/15

...found homes elsewhere. Long Leap was published in On Spec. Prophecy Breakers and Buddha Circus both found homes in anthologies, as did Juan Caceres. God Thieves landed in BCS and Way of the Needle got into Asimov's and won the readers' poll. The Dog's Paw collected... 8/15

...twenty rejections before landing in a Canadian horror anthology and then going on to be picked up in Ellen Datlow's Year Best Horror. Ghost Colors, Tachyon Hearts and Flight from the Ages made it into Asimov's and Flight... 9/15

...got me into Dozois Year's Best, which got it in front of a French editor, which eventually got me my first French book deal. Ghosts of Ganymede was my first Clarkesworld sale, on my 14th submission. In between, I kept on reading short stories, analyzing... 10/15

...them, seeing what those writers were doing that I wasn't *yet* and I kept on trying new things. But I also kept my work circulating and did my best to understand that a perfectly fine story won't be an acceptance in every market. Editorial voice... 11/15

...does and should matter. And I resolved to learn what went there. I'll let you know when I've learned that. I suppose this is the most important thing to keep in mind. If you get rejected, there's a good chance (a very good chance), that you have some more learning... 12/15

...to do on the craft, on your knowledge of the field, of what is original and what hasn't been tried too much before. But it's important to also keep in mind that a story can be great and just doesn't work for a magazine or anthology. So keep trying! I'll encourage you :) 13/15

I feel that career talk like this is super important, but usually try not to be that jerk who knows all the answers. I know some of my answers (and some of them are wrong). But I'm thinking that during confinement, I might set up some career talks, maybe meet... 14/15

...some people through Zoom or something and just chat with writers who want to ask questions that I might know some answers to. If you might be interested in such a chat, maybe reply to this. If 5-6 are interested, we could make a virtual career over coffee conversation. 15/15