Professional Courtesy

Under the flag of professional courtesy — as a person/writer. I saw a Craigslist ad for a new literary ezine that I checked out. Now… the ad mentioned payment, but their submission guidelines don’t mention payment.

However, that’s not the thing that made me decide to not submit to them. It’s this section:

5. We do not respond to work unless we intend to publish it. If your is to appear, we will contact you within one month. If you do not hear from us in that time period we have passed on your work. Please do not query us to ask the status of your submission. On occasion we may ask to see more of a writer’s work even though we have chosen not to publish their current submission.

I’ve done my own smack downs of newbie writers who think every submission should have confirmations sent out and a response in a given amount of time. THAT thinking is just newbie wrong. There are wait times, some are long and some are short. If a story’s been out for quite a while (i.e., TWICE their posted response times), a writer should DEFINITELY be able to query. Stories go awry all the time. Cyberspace eats them. Snail mail disappears. Etc. Etc.

Markets like this that don’t respond AT ALL??? The “if you don’t hear from us assume rejected” markets are just…rude. It’s like interviewing someone for a job (twice) and then not calling them to tell them they didn’t get the job. You don’t leave people hanging. It just sends flashbacks to high school and dating and all the crazy mind-game “I’ll call yous”, which means “You’ll never hear from me agains.”

Dude, if I’m going to take the time and effort to send you my work — after the time and effort of CREATING the work — I, at least, want the snarky form “you may not have mastery of the English language” photocopy reject. I want to know it passed through SOMEONE’S hands — even if it’s the mailrooom/secretary’s on the way to the trash can.

I’m not a newbie. This is NOT an industry of instant gratification. But there really needs to be some sense of CLOSURE. And the author should have some recourse to make sure the submission actually GOT THERE. I’ve had electronic subs not arrive before. Email goes wonky sometimes too. A writer should have the ability to query that it actually GOT THERE. To never hear and have no recourse to check? Yeah, no. That’s not right.

Tags: Writing