Turn Those Rejections into Sales! Here's How
~ Are Your Stories Selling or Accumulating Rejection Notices?
If you answer to that question is the later, then its time to sit back and take a real look at why you stories might be turning editors off.
Here is where I offer you a very simple method for weeding out stories that should earn ready publication from those that may require some tweaking or major rewriting.
My motto is:
GET EVERY STORY RESUBMITTED TODAY! OR GET CRACKING ON A REWRITE!
Which is simply:
GET the guidelines for the market you just submitted to. Did you follow them? Did you send them a story in:
1. the Right Genre;
2. the Right Format;
3. the Right Word Count?
If your answer is NO ~ Shame On You. You just wasted your time and the time of an editor. No wonder they rejected you! Pick another market and submit the story properly this time.
If you answered YES, that you did all 3 of these things, than Continue On:
EVERY editor does not add a comment on their rejection letter. Did this rejection include a hint as to why the story was rejected? If the answer is NO, don’t feel bad, your story may still be marketable as is, continue reading this blog entry.
If the answer is YES, skip to GET CRACKING ON A REWRITE section of this blog entry.
Your STORY may contain too many spelling and grammatical errors for an editor to consider to publishing. You can not trust your Spell Checker program to catch all spelling errors for you and it does not find or correct grammatical errors. Luckily, most word processing programs offer Spell Checking and Grammatical Error checking. Both MSWord or Word Perfect, have this capability. So be certain the option for the Spelling and Grammatical Checking is Turned ON and run it on your rejected story.
If you use MSWorks, you are out of luck, since the program does not offer such an option. Continue reading this blog entry.
After you have corrected and addressed each error it points out (or, and even if the program didn’t detect any errors, do the following:
1. Print out your story and visually review it for errors;
2. Circle the spelling errors, typos, and poorly worded sentences;
3. Fix the errors and tweak the faulty sentences;
4. Then continue reading this blog entry.
Before being RESUBMITTED, all stories MUST be read aloud a least once! Since you already printed out your story in the step above, READ IT ALOUD! You will be surprised how many errors you will find by doing this. Most will be stylistic, but such stylistic errors can also turn off editors as they review stories.
If you made considerable changes to the story in the previous step, you may want to print out a fresh copy of it, so it includes the corrections or updates you made. If you find more errors, or areas in need of tweaking, fix them and update your story; then continue reading this blog entry.
TODAY is the day you put your story to the test: THE DOES YOUR STORY HAVE MERIT TEST.
In a blog entry I wrote last February, I offered you a way to test your story idea to see if it possesses enough merit to attract a publisher.
Take This Test Now (CLICK HERE):
If your story PASSES the Merit Test, pick another market for your story and SUBMIT IT NOW! Follow all the Submission Guidelines naturally.
If your story FAILED the test, proceed to the Final Step of this blog entry:
The Final Step, being:
GET CRACKING ON A REWRITE!
Suck it up, get it done, spell and grammar check it, read it aloud one last time and send it out!
Follow the above Motto and YOU WILL GET More Stories PUBLISHED!
