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truepennyIf you're interested in my original post on the Magical Realism panel at Minicon 38, click here.
I've got a story which has just racked up its eleventh rejection. Now, it's a good story; people whose judgment I trust (including![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elisem) have indicated so with sufficient enthusiasm that I feel confident on that header. But I've been submitting it since July of 2001, and no one seems to want it.
And I think I just figured out why.
One editor told me flatly that it was a mainstream story, and today's extremely nice letter called it "surreal" (which was not the reason for rejection, so not meant derogatorily). I've been thinking of it as fantasy, because that's what I write and because I knew where the story was going when I started writing it. But now, having done that panel and dragged a bunch of stuff out into the forepart of my brain where I can see it, I think perhaps this story isn't fantasy. It's magical realism. The entire story is rather dreamily realistic, which is not at all my normal modus operandi. The magic is ambiguous, not systematic, entirely a function of character, and happens on the last page. As far as I was concerned, writing it, the story was all about getting to the last page and the moment at which magic occurs, but the story on the page is not the same as the story in my head; that's always true, but in this case the difference is at once more dramatic and more subtle than usual.
None of which helps me figure out where to send it, but at least I feel now like I have some idea of why I've been having so much trouble with it.
I've got a story which has just racked up its eleventh rejection. Now, it's a good story; people whose judgment I trust (including
elisem) have indicated so with sufficient enthusiasm that I feel confident on that header. But I've been submitting it since July of 2001, and no one seems to want it.And I think I just figured out why.
One editor told me flatly that it was a mainstream story, and today's extremely nice letter called it "surreal" (which was not the reason for rejection, so not meant derogatorily). I've been thinking of it as fantasy, because that's what I write and because I knew where the story was going when I started writing it. But now, having done that panel and dragged a bunch of stuff out into the forepart of my brain where I can see it, I think perhaps this story isn't fantasy. It's magical realism. The entire story is rather dreamily realistic, which is not at all my normal modus operandi. The magic is ambiguous, not systematic, entirely a function of character, and happens on the last page. As far as I was concerned, writing it, the story was all about getting to the last page and the moment at which magic occurs, but the story on the page is not the same as the story in my head; that's always true, but in this case the difference is at once more dramatic and more subtle than usual.
None of which helps me figure out where to send it, but at least I feel now like I have some idea of why I've been having so much trouble with it.
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-10 11:23 am (UTC)Good. Now you can send it to some other places. (This is Ca:SeTr, right?)
no subject
Date: 2003-05-10 11:32 am (UTC)Huh.
*goes off to ponder some more*