Today I received a very detailed reply to my chapbook submission from Happenstance.
A rejection, yes, but an offer of re-submission and the possibility of working with me over a long period of time if I can see where she's coming from in her comments about my poems.
It's great just getting an editorial crit of a bunch of my poems, to be honest. I agree with around two-thirds of what she says though a couple of poems, if I followed her suggestions, would be completely unrecognisable to me so I just won't be sending those back to her. But for most of them I can definitely see her suggestions as improvement.
18 comments:
I think if you've got someone who's prepared to work with you like that, it's great. She's a very good editor by all accounts. Good stuff.
They're obviously taking your work seriously. That's excellent.
Hearty congrats! That is NOT a rejection, that is an endorsement of what you are doing. You should be over the moon. Don't take it as a qualified acceptance, it's more than an acceptance.
This is great news. I agree, this is, in its way, better than a acceptance ... an editor who cares enough about your work to put time and effort into it over the long term. That's rare!
thanks guys, yes there's no guarantee she'll publish me in the future but it's a fantastic opportunity to get great feedback and hopefully improve my writing which, to me, is more important than publication, so I'm pretty happy.
Many congratulations, definitely not a rejection but an opportunity.
thankyou titus, yes I hope so!
Only very vaguely related... but I love the word "happenstance". I once wrote a poem called "happenstance orpheus". :)
And I agree, not a rejection at all. It's like going for an interview for a job you'd love and them offering some work epxperience ahead of a future offer. To me that's good. :)
Ah well... HN is a very good editor, as others have said. It sounds to me like she wants to see how you develop over the next while and whether you can take another step forward with your poetry. Sounds positive!
Well that's good-ish. I have an e-mail sitting in my inbox at the moment where an editor has asked me to consider reworking basically one line in a poem. I can see where she's coming from but I know what I meant and of course the poem is open to broad interpretation. It's a slippery slope, Marion. Proceed with care.
Well done! Hope you can work it all out. This is one of my dreams too - to see my work in print.
Amber
thanks everyone, I really like a lot of what happenstance publishes so I'm delighted to get her thoughts on my poems.
:-)
it's good to see you delighted and motivated and optimistic - your poems certainly deserve all that attention...
thankyou, that's very sweet of you :)
Churchill said: man of success is one that goes from one failure to another with great enthusiasm.
lol, you've got find success wherever you can in this line of business!
That's pretty much the response I got from HN - focussed and detailed evaluation, each poem written on and encouragement to submit again. How many other editors would take that kind of time and trouble. H'stance is worth sticking with, sorlil. Get stuck in again!
she puts a lot of effort into each submission doesn't she?! I'm working on a new submission at the moment.
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