![\"rejection\"](\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/rejection.jpg\")
All writers are used to rejection (either that or they are dangerously off-balance, sitting in their garrets and muttering about all the people who don’t understand their genius).\u00a0 But I’ve noticed something interesting, lately.\u00a0 Out of all the writers I know who have a fair number of short stories out on the street at the same time (let’s say half a dozen), all of us have had multiple days with two or even three rejections coming within hours of each other.<\/p>\n
Clearly, this seems a bit improbable.\u00a0 If we use round numbers, someone with 6 short stories out under submission could expect a roughly 1.7% chance of getting a rejection on any given day (assuming that editors work weekends, which evidence certainly suggests they do).\u00a0 So, if my math is right, that means about a 0.0004% chance of getting three in one day.\u00a0 Now I could believe that happening, but this has happened to 100% of my sample, remember, multiple times in some cases.<\/p>\n
![\"privateRyanLetter\"](\"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/privateRyanLetter.jpg\")
But I realized that while many of us seem to experience these triple rejection days, none of us seem to have them on the same day<\/em>.\u00a0 That kind of messes up my rejection party theory, so I have a new one. Now I’m pretty sure that the editors of magazines simply store up their rejections as they happen, and coordinate with one another so as to send out as many to the same person on the same day as possible.\u00a0 So it is sort of like that scene in Saving Private Ryan<\/em> where the women writing letters of condolence realize with mounting horror that one mother is about to get three letters.\u00a0 Except in this case that’s the sweet spot they’re aiming for.\u00a0 Why would they do this, you ask?\u00a0 I’m guessing that it is to break the spirit of as many writers as possible, so they give up and become editors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"