Dear Editors

Arbutus

I’m always seeing tweets from editors that I love, telling us writers about our awesome submission errors.  Honestly, I think some of these are a riot.  But, here’s my beef for almost all the editors out there sending me kind rejections.  If it truly sucks TELL ME SO!  Sometimes I get so into an idea for a story but the story goes somewhere else and I end up submitting it anyway and I get HEAPS of very kind, gentle rejections.  I’ve briefly worn the editor hat and now I know that so many times when a story just plain sucks you say something nice.  GAH!

Write down my name.  If you read a sub from me and you want to save your fellow editors the pain of having to read it as well just say, “Dear Teresa, What the hell were you sniffing when you wrote this?  Seriously, not worth salvaging, don’t send me crap like this again.”  Copy this if you like.  I can take it.

I love when editors give me their honest feedback whether it be good or negative.   I circulated one story around for a while and received many quick rejections.  Some were personal and NICE.  I knew that I liked the story but they weren’t telling me why they weren’t.  One editor finally broke it down for me and it made perfect sense.  I will be re-writing it completely with her remarks in mind and only wish that other editors weren’t so hesitant to be honest with me.

So there you have it.  Teresa Houle likes to be told off.  If my writing stunk up your day, let me know.  It’s better than me just sending it out to other unsuspecting editors.

Issue number 1 (or virgin) of Negative Suck is out and I’m  in it.  I saw xtx in there too.  The story I have in there is also going to be featured in Target Audience next month or so.  There is talk of artwork to accompany the story as well.  Cool.