So close

I received this in the ol’ email inbox this afternoon.

Thank you very much for your sto­ry, and for let­ting us hang on to it for as long as we did. The piece has received more than one read, as our first read­er enjoyed it a great deal. Due to our cur­rent (the­mat­ic) pub­li­ca­tion needs, how­ev­er, we are unable to place this story.

[…]

Although we can’t use your work at this time, we thank you for think­ing of us and encour­age you to sub­mit again in the future.

The fun­ny thing is, they did­n’t tell me which sto­ry they were reject­ing, and I could­n’t remem­ber what I’d sub­mit­ted to their mar­ket. (I also could­n’t find my ini­tial sub­mis­sion in my out­box, but that was less sur­pris­ing; a lot of mar­kets these days are using Sub­mit­table or Mok­sha or some oth­er online sub­mis­sion gateway.)

Thank heav­ens for The Sub­mis­sions Grinder. I did a quick search on the mar­ket name, and found that, yes, I had sub­mit­ted a piece to them, wa-a-a-ay back in June 2020. Their sub­mis­sions page said that they don’t gen­er­al­ly send out rejec­tions, so if you did­n’t hear in about three months, assume you were not one of the lucky ones. I had assumed that, since Sep­tem­ber came and went with no word, that I was not one of the lucky ones.

Turns out I was right, but it seems I came clos­er than I thought.

Oh well. Once more unto the breach and all that. At least they liked the sto­ry; with form rejec­tions it can be very hard to tell.

PS: If you’re a writer and you’re not using The Sub­mis­sions Grinder, I strong­ly rec­om­mend you at least look into it.