I think I first heard this term about 8-10 years ago, when I was in the thick of my short story writing and submitting days. Rejectomancy (it even has an Urban Dictionary entry!) is the art of trying to figure out what the editor really meant by rejecting your short story or novel. It comes into prominence when a bunch of writers get together and compare notes about their rejections from the same market. During one of these conversations, a group of writers discovered that Realms of Fantasy magazine sends out color-coded rejections: yellow if you made the first cut, blue if you didn’t (i.e. the Blue Form of Death). Both are preprinted and impersonal form letters, but the wording is slightly different. The yellow slips are encouraging, the blue slips aren’t. And oh, the ecstasy a writer feels upon receiving that yellow slip for the first time!
Thus, it is inferred that editors actually send secret messages through rejection slips. The questions one asks: is the slip signed by the editor or the editor’s assistant? Is it a form letter, or addressed to you personally? Is there any encouragement? Is your story mentioned by title? What does the editor really mean by saying, “Does not suit our needs at this time?”
You know what the editor means by that? That the work does not suit the market’s needs.
Really, you know what the best thing you can do with a rejection slip is? Forget about it. Don’t analyze it, don’t dwell on it. Now, fifty rejections of the same piece might be a message. But one rejection? It’s meaningless. Pack the story up and send it somewhere else.
Rejection slips say only one thing: this isn’t for us. Try again with another piece. Any other meaning is in your own mind, and rejectomancy is a shallow step into madness.
For additional reading, I recommend editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s classic Slushkiller essay, which lists the reasons a novel gets rejected — and why a novel sells.
