What's worse than a rejection letter?

I'll admit I've been a bit testy lately. I've had a lot of work to complete, not enough hours in the day to finish my assignments and suddenly it's colder than Alaska. And I'm in Texas. Oh and did I mention my husband quit smoking?

Between my fatigue, lack of body warmth and my husband who acts like he might commit some heinous crime against me at any moment, I've not been a happy camper this week. Which makes the fact that I've called myself The Positive Writer a bit ironic but that's a whole different post for another day.

The point of this blog is to bring up a subject which has bothered me more than anything this week. It's the answer to my question, "what's worse than a rejection letter?".

Well I'll tell you what's worse....silence.

You see I sent a query in October to a well-known online parenting magazine. Now I don't generally write for parenting magazines but I had a great idea for an article and thought I would pitch it. So, after lining up two really strong expert sources who gave me a world of information on my topic and then putting together some of my best clips, I wrote what I thought to be a great, attention getting query and sent it off.

Then I waited.

I'm still waiting. Even after contacting the editor a second time asking for verification they received my query, I've heard nothing.

This to me is unacceptable. Sure, I can understand not responding to the initial query. I can even understand receiving a rejection letter. But to not respond at all just seems.....wrong.

Yes I know editors have tons of work and not enough time to get it all done. One of my closest writing friends is an editor and she's given me the inside scoop. She even managed to talk me down, yesterday, from the edge of insanity when I briefly debated on whether or not to email this particular editor and give her a piece of my mind (not one of my better ideas, she assured me).

The point is, however, as writers, most of us work hard at our craft. We put time and effort into queries. To receive a rejection is tough but at least it's validation that, yes, someone read what we had to say. Or someone just pretended to read what we had to say but at least took the time to send us back a response.

So instead of dashing off a nasty email, I turned my bitterness toward doing a bit of research to find out what a writer should do in my situation. Moira Allen has a wonderful article entitled How to Write a Successful Query where she talks about how long to wait for a reply and what to do when you don't receive one. I also read another very good article on a Suite 101 site called Great Query Letters, No Replies. This article is about queries sent to fiction agents. Both are very informative and I suggest you check them out.

For now, I'm going to sit tight, try not to hurt anyone and give it two more weeks. Then, if I have to, I'm going to write myself a rejection letter and be done with it.