While I was filing away my most recent rejection letter, I noticed that I had an F&SF rejection slip from a couple of years ago for a short piece that I'd sent in, "The Weatherlight Witch", which is more a character sketch than a story. The thing is, it wasn't a rejection from John Joseph Adams. It was from Gordon Van Gelder, and it was the "alas" letter, which totally rocks. Pretty much everyone in Wyrdsmiths liked the piece when I workshopped it, though I heard one universal problem with it--it isn't a story. There's no plot arc. The language is lovely, the character is well-drawn, but there's no story. Makes sense that GVG wrote "...this didn't do enough for me, alas." (italics mine) But wow, does that rock--and I didn't even know about it at the time!
Anybody have weird/strange/funny/odd rejection stories that might enlighten us, or at least lighten our moods? What's the most interesting rejection letter you've gotten?
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I can't remember where it was from (this was early in my career, and, thanks to the advice of Eleanor Arnason I do NOT keep my rejection letters.) But... someone had scrawled on the front piece of my manuscript: "Do not use staples!"
My personal favorite rejection story happened to my friend S.N.Arly who got a reject back with somebody else's story enclosed.
Kelly Swails the intrepid interloper here ...
I don't have any unusual or funny rejection stories, but I wondered what the "alas" letter was all about from GVG. Obviously I know that it's cool to be rejected by the big dog himself, but is the "alas" a mythical-writer-status-thing we newbies should be aware of?
Hey Kelly X,
GVG's letters for years always included an "alas" somewhere in them. So much so that they eventually become to be known by that sobriquet as in: I got an Alas from F&SF this week. But then when he bought the magazine and took it independent an actual GVG reject become a thing of some rarity and so no more "alases". Those who came late to the party thus largely missed out on one of the old rites of passage.
I once got a rejection from Zoetrope:All-Story that went along the lines of: "We all loved this story. Wepassed itaround the edirotial office three times and everyone enjoyed it greatly. Good-luck placing it in the future."
I remember being thrilled when I received my first "Alas," from GVG!
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