In the spirit of openness, I should relate to you one of my (many) lessons from writing, and a bitter pill to swallow, that, shoch horror, some of what I write simply isn’t good enough. It was looking for places to submit short stories that brought about this revelation, and more specifically, looking through the criteria and guidance for submissions.
This isn’t to say I’m not great, because clearly I am 😊, but the guidance listed, particularly the ‘what we are looking for’ and even more relevant ‘what we are not looking for’ made me realise that some of my stories just weren’t original enough, there wasn’t enough character progression, or they’d clearly received things like it before. I still love my little creations of course, but if those are the doubts I’m having myself when reading the criteria… well, you could probably fill in the following thought yourself, but for the sake of clarity, if the author doesn’t think the story appeals to the criteria or avoids their common pitfalls, then what hope is their that the editor will have a different view?
In some cases this has led me to revisit a story, in others I think it might fit well with other tales in an anthology at a future date, or may appeal to a more niche or specialist competition or magazine, or sadly the decision that it will never go anywhere for a wider audience. Don’t feel sorry for those stories though, I let them nestle in amongst their brethren, and I never tell them that they are unloved, just that the World isn’t ready for them yet. Who knows, in years to come they might emerge from the virtual drawer, we might go for a long walk in the countryside together and decide to give our relationship another go. Or they might just end up on… ahem…the farm with Old Yeller.
Stay safe,
Kit