Poet withdrawn, but by whom? NOT BY ME!!!

[Richard H. Fay]

Recently, I sent out a query in regard to a poem I thought was still being held at a certain publication. Turns out, the editor thought I had withdrawn the poem and removed it from her short list. I had never sent a withdrawal; previously, I sent a query asking about the status of my poetry submission, and was told it was being held for further consideration. Now it seems I lost any chance of seeing the poem in the upcoming issue of this particular zine because the editor mistakenly thought I had withdrawn the piece.

Good grief!

Regular, ordinary rejections I can just about handle. It's this weird garbage that's starting to get to me.

[crystalwizard]

Good thing you queried then, right? And a good lesson for everyone not to just assume that your query/submission got where you intended it or is still under consideration.

[Richard H. Fay]

Good thing you queried then, right? And a good lesson for everyone not to just assume that your query/submission got where you intended it or is still under consideration.

Yeah. This was query number two. Query number one, the one where I found out that the piece was being held for further consideration, had been sent back in early August.

My submission and both queries did get to the right place. It was more a matter of the editor making a mess of things on her end. Did she truly confuse me with someone else, or did she imagine the whole episode? I wonder. I try to be understanding of human fallibility, but when editors often want perfection from those submitting material for consideration, weird screw-ups like this can be a bit hard to take. Plus, it had to be the poem that has had nothing but trouble on the winding, rocky road to publication, didn't it?

As bad and perplexing as the news was when the editor replied to query number two, at least she replied. I've been in the situation where second queries go unanswered. That's when I give up on querying and just assume either the piece was rejected or the market is dead.

Good thing you queried then, right?

I would have kept wondering, at least until the first issue of the zine came out, if I hadn't queried.

...a good lesson for everyone not to just assume that your query/submission got where you intended it or is still under consideration.

There may be valid reasons to question the wisdom of sharing such stories publicly, but I do it anyway. One of the reasons I do share such anecdotes of the weirder, more frustrating side of the realm of publication, is to let aspiring writers know what they might be in for when they first begin to wander down that path. It can be crazy out there in the publication jungle, and forewarned is forearmed.

I wish someone had forewarned me how crazy and frustrating it could be at times, outside of the usual frustration of regular rejection. I was rather naive when I started down that path. I think I know better now.

[Chaos Perpetual]

That's sort of strange, but obviously just a mix-up, and I'm sure it happens. I recall receiving a couple of submission replies in the past that didn't make much sense, and I just assumed in those instances that they must have had my submission confused with someone else's.

This incident is unfortunate, but at least you found out about it.

[Samuel Mae]

Heh--a few months back i got a personalized rejection from a well-regarded mag. Problem was, the personal comments were for a completely different story (and obviously, not one of mine). So i let them know and they sent out the correct rejection, which was all good. Then five weeks later i got the initial rejection from them again!

Of course, there was that other time when i was querying a novel and sent a query out with Dear AGENT at the top rather than the agent's name. I never heard back about that one.

[Richard H. Fay]

Heh--a few months back i got a personalized rejection from a well-regarded mag. Problem was, the personal comments were for a completely different story (and obviously, not one of mine). So i let them know and they sent out the correct rejection, which was all good. Then five weeks later i got the initial rejection from them again!

Of course, there was that other time when i was querying a novel and sent a query out with Dear AGENT at the top rather than the agent's name. I never heard back about that one.

What I've found is that, if you're at this publication thing long enough, you end up with all sorts of weird and crazy stories.

This withdrawal when I didn't withdraw the piece is only the latest in a long string of similarly crazy incidents. Another one that was pretty insane was when I saw an acceptance turn into a rejection, with no acknowledgment of the prior acceptance. Both e-mails apparently came from the same person. It seems they liked my poem one day, but didn't like it later on.

Weird.