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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Your Work is "Gross or Disgusting in Nature"


This out-to-lunch rejection is long and involved with many choices, but the important part is circled.  Click to enlarge and read the entire range of possible reasons for rejection. It's quite amusing.

6 comments:

The Oceanside Animals said...

Hmm ... "gross or disgusting in nature" ... something tells me that many of my stories would have come back with that one circled, although given my usual subject matter I doubt I would have submitted to a market named "Lunch Hour Stories" anyway.

Anonymous said...

Goodness.

Their editor seems to have a blog too, and the current posting is regarding letters from disgruntled writers, rejected...

http://lunchhourstories.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

That journal is actually out-of-print; they accepted one of my stories, but ceased publication a few months later.

The Next said...

This magazine closed many, many months ago. They published good work, but couldn't get over the stigma of looking too much like One Story. Anyway, aside from a personal rejection, this is an ideal rejection letter, no? It gives you a bit of feedback. Sorry to hear about your novel not selling, W,R. I hope you write another one.

happy writer said...

nice actually to see the checklist. better than the impersonal slip that leaves you guessing whether or not they'd actually read or glanced at any of your submission.

you should blog about the much more common rejection now, the new de rigueur of 09 (for agents, trade editors, magazine editors, newspaper editors, even blurb requests to other writers): dead silence.

i hate when you mail your requested pages with return postage and they can't even return the thing or acknowledge ever having seen it. it's just rude and super bad karma.

Mary Witzl said...

I got this one from them too! It's not my best one so far, but it's definitely a cut above "We read your work with interest."