The sounds of silence

[ritaxis]

Eight months ago next week, I shipped off my submission to -- well, to the place I sent it to. I sent it registered and got the receipt. So they got it.

Two months ago I wrote an inquiry asking about it. Not asking for a decision, just asking where it was in the process.

A month ago I sent an email following up on it.

Excuse me while I indulge in a few moments of author insanity.

I've been told over and over that no, editors don't withold information like this because they're appalled at the low quality, offensive content, or bad formatting of a manuscript (none of which, I am pretty sure, apply anyway), or because they are avoiding the personality of the author. I've been told that they just do what they do when they do it, having to do with the other obligations they have. But. How hard is it just to tell me whether the thing is still in the slush pile, or being read, or being processed for acceptance or rejection? They've got stamped envelopes with my address on them -- plural, yes, because they've got the ones I sent them four years ago and three years ago for the other manuscript they never read.

I just don't want to be a posthumous author, okay?

Comments

I hate to be negative

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

though it was about a novel I wrote that I now find rather "mary=sue" (I'm finally decidedto part it out and rewrite the whole damned thing because of that).

But at the time I was having success with my Kayli stories, selling them readily to Marion Zimmer Bradley. And I'd sent the novel to DAW with my pedigree in a short letter, at the time they were accepting novels in full. I'd sent the novel to DAW because they were publishing stuff like I wrote, so it seemed a good choice. Well, it sat there for a long time. Because Marion asked if I had any novel length stuff out to any houses, I said, yeah, at DAW, but they've had it for over a year.

she said "you're too polite, write Editor Whatever and say I told him to at least look at it." When I finally got it back about two months later it had been used as a coffee stop, it had rings and sugar encrustations that were not comprehendable beyond anything else.

At the time, we were dependent on typewriters,not computers, copying cost a f-ing fortune and it was very very depressing. I gave up for a while, which was a mistake. I'm back in the saddle but kind of rusty. So it's taking time, but I'm working on novel length stuff, including the reconstruction of which I spoke.

Re: I hate to be negative

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

I am interrupting after chancing on this through thomasyan's friends' list to say--I loved your Kayli stories when I was a teenager! I thought they were charming and engaging and fun.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

My agent has just, yesterday, got a contract for me which was verbally agreed at WFC last November.

I don't know whether this is a good sign or a bad sign for your manuscript, and indeed you might as well go by the direction birds fly overhead for all I can tell.

Commiserations.

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

The Other Anna has had a short with a US publisher for months and months, and no answers to queries in all kinds of forms. It may be the same publisher, even. You might want to talk to her for mutual commiseration :-(

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I really, really sympathise over the not hearing. It happened with the original submission of the fantasy whodunit many years ago. Editor liked it, was seriously talking about publication, then came takeovers and mergers. Editor moves to another job, company move to another office, manuscript disappears into a black hole. I never did get it back and when, eventually, some new bod replied to my query, they had never seen it. All this time I should have been getting on with other novels, but didn't because I wanted to know the outcome. At least you haven't made that mistake and have other things completed.

If the publisher sitting on your MS is the one I think it is, they did the same with a short of mine, submitted for an anthology. In the end I never did get a reply, just picked up via the grapevine that if you hadn't had a reply, then consider it rejected. Which I did and submitted it to F&FS, only to be told that they really liked it but had just accepted another story with a very similar theme, so they didn't want mine. Gggnnnhh!

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

The admiring rejection slip is another thing I can do without. I stopped writing shorts for a long time. I figured if, after fifteen years of "this is really very very good but not for us, please send your next one" from several editors, I still couldn't get published, there was just some little thing I wasn't getting and maybe couldn't get and I should write novels.

However, with novels, I can't even get a rejection slip. Well, yes I can, but not from that publkisher.

I'm giving them another couple months and then if I don't hear anything (I mean don't hear anything at all) I'll withdraw it and never send them another manuscript again -- I do have a few other options, even though I don't have many.

I mean, if they're really getting so many manuscripts that they really just can't read them, they could send them back unread with a note "sorry, we're full up and can't read this, best of luck elsewhere" -- I'd be irritated but I'd be free. This is downright discouraging.