Here’s a classic example of the importance of listening to what people say to you when they reject your work. As you may remember, back in January I was in the finals of the NYC Midnight “Tweet Me a Story” contest, where the key word to be used in our entries was “below”. As it happens, none of my entries made it into the top 25, but I did like one of them. So I tweaked it a bit and sent it off to @nanoism, one of the TwitFic outlets that I hadn’t (still haven’t!) cracked. This is part of the response that I got back from Ben White, Nanoism’s editor:
This was a close call … I think JS Graustein over at @picfic might really enjoy this, so you might think of slapping a clever title on it (which would help add that depth) and sending it her way.
Now @picfic was the other major Twitter market that I hadn’t cracked, so I of course took his advice. Last night I received my acceptance … from Ben White, who just happened to be covering whilst PicFic‘s editor was finishing off another project! The story will appear on PicFic some time in April or May, and it’s called “Not So Much a Rough Guide”.
Meanwhile, I still need to take the other piece of advice that Ben gave me when he rejected it at Nanoism. Which was “send me another” …