The Adirondack Review had this one so long it could have given birth to other stories. Seriously, I'm talking a long time....maybe even a year. Maybe longer. I could count up the years with Diane Goettel's perky emails, announcing contests and books, etc. (I am traveling just now, but will check my notes and confirm the date of submission with an update).
On Apr xx, 2008, at 1:15 PM, Kara Christenson wrote:
Dear Writer, Rejected,
Thank you very much for submitting your work to The Adirondack Review. I do apologize for the lengthy turn-around time.
After reviewing "[title of story]", we have decided not to publish it.
The Adirondack Review receives hundreds of stories every year and only publishes a handful.
We wish you the best of luck finding a home for your story.
Regards,
The Adirondack Review Staff
--
Kara Christenson
Fiction Editor, The Adirondack Review
www.theadirondackreview.com
10 comments:
Check this out, over at VQR:
“I can’t enumerate all the ways in which this is horrible.”
http://www.vqronline.org/blog/2008/04/29/reader-comments/
Editors comments you never see, now there on display...
Waldo Jaquith, Ted Genoways and VQR should have the courage to send these comments to the submitters. See, they had the time to evaluate the work, and even type in an opinion of it. But guess what? Jaquith, Genoways and the rest of the crew at VQR are cowards. They do not stand behind their opinions. They do not offer authors the courtesy of their honest opinions of their work. A great editor would not be ashamed to tell an author "barf-o". Oh but these people just post this list of "real, honest, true opinions of VQR submissions!" Which has the effect of making fun of all the would-be submitters.
Thanks, puc, for posting this link. Let's call Ted Genoways what he is. And Waldo too. They disgust me.
got the same adirondack rejection two days ago. they must've mass emailed us. they had the sub for eleven months.
wrote back and suggested--politely--that they change their sim sub policy. no response to the email. i'll probably have to wait eleven months for that, too.
Adirondack lost my first submission, submitted February of last year. Hopeful man that I am, I tried again and now they've had a story of mine since 9/8/2007 - so going on nine months.
Waldo Jaquith, Ted Genoways and VQR should have the courage to send these comments to the submitters. See, they had the time to evaluate the work, and even type in an opinion of it. But guess what? Jaquith, Genoways and the rest of the crew at VQR are cowards. They do not stand behind their opinions.
We do send those comments, but rendered politely, as I've explained. It's far more useful to provide such feedback in the form of advice, rather than as complaints. Ditto for readers' glowing comments, which are also rephrased to be more informative.
How delightfully ironic that you're calling me a coward when you're the one lacking the gumption to comment under your own name. And it's more ironic still that you're unhappy about VQR putting "literary rejections on display." :)
Well, wait just a minute, now, WJ. We like it when *we* joke about rejections, but not when we are the editorial butt of someone else's joke, or when anyone else jokes about rejections for that matter. We're irrational that way. But thanks for stopping by and having a sense of humor about our lack of humor.
What happened to VQR's positive post? "Ditto for readers' glowing comments, which are also rephrased to be more informative." It was on the VQR site yesterday, but it seems to have disappeared. No respect for the puny inexhaustible voice?
What happened to VQR's positive post?
It's there -- it's been there the whole time. (I hope. If not, there's something deeply wrong with our database, which would, of course, be my fault.) I notice that I screwed up the link in my prior comment, though, so you probably got a 404 from LROD.
Thank you. The link didn't work and I didn't see it on the home page so wrongly concluded you had decided to delete it. Sorry about that. I actually think there's no harm done with the post anyway - if there's discussion, which there is (look over at Ward Six), and you got folks thinking - which is what a blog should do. Writers must grow thick skins. It used to be that if one couldn't write, one became an editor. As Woody Allen said: those that can't...teach; those who can't teach, teach P.E. We might now add: Those who can't write, can become readers.
Waldo, so do I have to put my phone number down to make comment?
I'm a struggling writer. My name is unimportant. However, you and Genoways and the staff of VQR, in case you've forgotten, are public figures -- publishers.
That said, you have a responsibility. I'm just a dumb bloke, one of the idiots you want to buy your magazine. (Though I'm sure, thanks to the likes of Gloria and others on here, that UV funds you quite well.)
But my point is this: you read submissions and do not have the courage to tell the submitters how you really feel about these submissions. Instead, you slap them with a form letter, and ask them to please not submit again for six months (because you've got enough laughs in the slush bin).
That is cowardly. Has nothing to do with putting Literary Rejects on Display. What VQR has done is the biggest Literary Rejection I've seen on display on this site in a long time. It's sick. But most of all, it's an act of cowardice.
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