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Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Uncommonly Well-Written for Tin House

Here's the thing about Tin House. No matter how you get to them, no matter how personal your relationship is to the editor who promises her colleague, who is your friend's friend, that she will read the manuscript personally; no matter how often you are invited to send more , the damn thing always gets read by an assistant, who pretends to represent the whole place. In this case, Tony Perez, who decides my fate by adding a tidbit to the standard rejections thusly: "We found [title of novel] to be uncommonly well-written and, for the most part, [an] interesting read." We? Doubtful. But, it is a nice little bone he tossed me, so I should shut up and be happy. Oddly, Perez has rejected this novel before for a different editor there (without reading it, I surmise), so I guess I should also be happy someone had an actual look at it. But here's the thing: Nanci McCloskey should have read the thing herself, as promised, but she did not.

Oh well, that's just how they roll over there at the house of tin. I hear it's a snake pit in there. (BTW, for those keeping track, I only have one more rejection to go before I shut this effort down for awhile.)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tell me more about the snake pit?

Anonymous said...

Incredibly frustrating. I feel your pain. I think it will happen for you. I really do.

gimme said...

Ha! Caught young Tony there, ya did...:) You could probably resend the same novel in 2 months and get the same form letter (I've got the "well-written" thing from him, too). He doesn't read doodly.

Like most assistant editors, his job is mainly to politely send out form letters.

There's really no hope given our current climate, LROD, but that doesn't mean give up. Keep writing em' and once the whole corporate publishing structure collapses (it's happening as we speak), something new will hopefully pop up, and by then you'll have a big backlog of finished work.

Then you can just kick back for awhile and publish one every few years... that's my plan, anyway...:)

gimme said...

So, you not allowing comments anymore, W/R? I've had a couple now that have never appeared.

Writer, Rejected said...

Still loving comments. Sorry for the delay, everyone.

I just found 14 unmoderated comments! There must have been some disconnect from the blog to my email account, so I didn't know there was a backlog.

I thought it seemed awfully quiet out there...holiday weekend and all.