Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Again, no cigar

"Although we have decided against using this manuscript, we were interested in it and would be glad to see more of your work."

This from a journal that's probably in the top five journals I would love to get an acceptance from. Y'all, how long should I wait before I send to them again? I'm thinking maybe as soon as the first of the year; does that sound reasonable? (Yes, that falls within their stated reading period. I could also wait longer and still be okay, reading-period-wise.)

7 comments:

Amanda Auchter said...

If it is the NYer, wait 6-9 months. Not kidding. I usually wait about 6 months before submitting to a journal that has previously rejected me. At PLR, one of my greatest pet peeves is receiving work from someone we rejected like, um, five days ago. A courteous amount of time would be 3-6 months, especially if it is a journal with a giant submission rate.

Anne Haines said...

Hah - not the NYer. I got my rejection slip from them for this decade already. ;)

I generally don't send to most places more than once a year unless I get some kind of encouragement; it's these stinkin' encouraging rejection slips that always throw me off!

(I just checked my records -- it had been 3 years since I'd pestered this particular journal, prior to this.)

Anonymous said...

That slip is similar to one I received from journal, "PR." I waited 6 months and sent again. Then I just got a plain rejection slip. ha.

Anne Haines said...

Jilly, that has happened to me before -- in fact there is one journal that sent me like three or four encouraging rejections in a row, in fact I think they kicked the encouragement up a notch at one point, and then all of a sudden they just went cold on me! I decided to stop sending to them for a while (I'd been sending about twice a year).

Sometimes I think there's no way to guess what's going to strike an editor's fancy and what's not. (So mostly I just worry about writing better poems and figure the publishing part will either take care of itself, or not ... it's not like I'm depending on it for a paycheck, after all!)

Unknown said...

You know, I don't know if it's possible to second guess these things -- because I doubt they have an agenda when they make those comments. I might not send back *right* away, but if you have something new (or newly freed up from somewhere else) that is right for them, and you haven't sent for 4-6 months, I think it's all right to try again.

Then again, I'm not a very patient person.

Lyle Daggett said...

I once sent poems to a magazine totally out of the blue -- just decided to try them -- and got back what was essentially a rejection letter from one of the editors, but a highly enthusiastic "please send us more poems" letter.

A full page letter urging, imploring me to send them more poems to consider at their next reading period (and they gave the dates). They insisted they were only saying no to the poems I'd sent because they just ran out of room in the current issue. They named one specific poem among the group I'd sent that they'd like me to send to them to consider again.

So the reading period date came, I sent more poems with a friendly cover letter (and S.A.S.E. etc.) -- and I never heard back from them. Eventually I sent a polite query letter with a return postcard, and still never heard back. Oh well...

My general rule of thumb for sending poems again, when I get "not this time but try us again" letters, is to wait until the current issue is out, and/or the next reading period, before sending again. I figure at that point the original "no" response has expired.

Anne Haines said...

Diane: Yeah, I'm not patient either. Sometimes it looks like I am, but only because I procrastinate a lot. ;)

Lyle: Yikes! That's kind of depressing.