On Reading Your Rejections’ Entrails (Please Don’t)

This post adapted from my Twitter thread, here.

Last week I read an interesting piece on the SFWA blog: “Transparency in Slush,” by AJ Cunder.
It’s a piece that lays out how opaque, sometimes downright shrouded in mystery, the whole system of going through the slushpile can often be.

That opacity begs so many questions. Who really read my story? Was it considered fairly? How far did they get before rejecting? Did the editor read it? What does it mean if they have?

It’s a fascinating topic, and I empathize deeply with all those pain points and uncertainty. I read story submissions for both Diabolical Plots and for PodCastle, and I had some thoughts of my own in response. Including a word of caution, of sorts.

At Diabolical Plots, every story goes through one of our three editors (David, Kel, or I). Most (but not all) first get comments from two of our First Readers, which helps prime us and give us a wider perspective. At PodCastle, First Readers send rejections, so a First Reader might be the only reader. (That's no coincidence, I suspect, with PodCastle maximal wordcount being twice Diabolical's!)
Reading for two magazines, I can see how each place sets up what works for them. Part of that is style and preference; part of that is just managing capacity and submission load.

But along with sharing the details and demystifying the process, I also have this to say: Understanding the process will tell you very very little about your submission. Please, please, do not try to read the entrails of your holds and your rejections.

That kind of rejectomancy is mostly looking for the "why" for your particular "no, thank you." And that's a problem, because (a) there isn't a clear "why"; not really, and (b) the barriers to communicating any "why" are TERRIBLE.

There isn’t a clear “Why”

It would be nice to think of rejections as having a "why."
You know. A clear flaw which, if amended, could change the no to a yes. A well-argued justification, which laid out where precisely where you stand.

Problem is, readers and editors don't necessarily have such a justification. Our job isn't to dissect stories and offer criticism. It's to find stories we love, and think our readers will, too. This means we can reach "not for me" without laying out any orderly rationale.

And more than that: we can, generally, point at where we lost interest, or something that rubbed us the wrong way. But that is by no means, "the thing that, were it fixed, we'd like the story."
Let’s not forget, the goal isn't "the editor doesn't dislike anything." It's "the editor should love it."

Imagine you have read a 400 page anthology. I ask you, which story was your favorite, and you enthusiastically tell me.
Then I ask you, well, what about this other story? Why wasn't that one your favorite?
Why?

You might well have some answer, if you actively disliked that story. But your choice was because of all the reasons you DID love your favorite. Which have very little to do with anything intrinsic to the other piece.

(I really do like “read an anthology and pick your favorite” as a thought exercise, as intuition for slush.
If you and I pick different favorites, that doesn’t mean either of us is wrong — although, if we do happen to pick the same one, that might mean something, too!)

That's for there being no clear "why."

The terrible traps of explaining the “why”

The other reason I promised you is because communicating anything approaching a "why" has a lot of insidious barriers.
Starting with this: Rejections have a power dynamic to them, that IMO requires a lot of care.

An editor telling a fledgling author something like, say, "I didn't find this character believable", can fuck. them. up.
It can be demoralizing.
It can be unclear, confusing.
It can be wrong.

To repeat, our job is to find stories we love. That doesn't mean our opinions should be treated as Pronouncements From On High.
...but they can be. They often are. Because we're the ones sending the rejection notes.

Another huge barrier here is that giving helpful, constructive criticism is a LOT of work. You want to be clear. You want to be encouraging.
You want to explain intuitions and reactions and hand-wavy writing craft, without even knowing if you have any terminology in common.

There's no way around it: Editorial comments are always going to be deeply subjective, and extremely brief. And that puts sharp limitations on what can be communicated.
I would have a far easier time writing a long-form essay about why I did and didn't like a story, than I would filling out a rubric, or choosing from a canned set of explanations.
But of course, I can't be writing essays for the whole slush pile.

All of which is to say: A rejection letter is a crappy medium for communicating criticism.
"How many stages did this get past," or "Did this reach the Editor in Chief," or "how long was this held," are all crappy proxies.

That being said, these crappy proxies are also, kiiind of, the best we've got. Writers’ only way of gleaning some insight into editorial opinion.
But never, never forget how crappy, unreliable, uninformative, and misleading they are.
Don't use rejectomancy to judge your story, your worth. That way lies madness.

NONE OF WHICH is to detract from all of AJ Cunder's excellent insights about the process of slushreading, and the importance of transparency! But I think it helps to think of slushreading as an entire system, rather than focus on one individual's submissions (specifically, yours!).

How, then?

OK, how else can you get a sense of where a magazine is at, whether your submissions are being handled well?

I’d offer that you can learn a lot by how the magazine itself is doing.
Is it publishing compelling work?
Does it have a distinct voice?
Is it publishing the same great pros over and over? Or is it focused on new voices? Maybe a mix?
Which groups is it representing well? Which isn't it?

If you're happy with the answers, then that magazine's slushreading system is probably working pretty well, however it's set up!
If you're not, the criticism might make more sense at that larger scope, than at "I don't know if my submission specifically was taken seriously."

And I'll close on this: To authors, I'll say, remember the slushpile is a big system. Trying to make sense of it as one individual might mislead you.
But to staff, to first readers, it's exactly the opposite: Always remember that every single story comes from an individual.

Sure. We need to work in bulk. We need to move fast. We need to get through stories in hundreds or thousands. But each yay or nay we send, is something someone cares about deeply. And while we can only do so much to honor that, we will do all we can.