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editors and rejection
There's a lot of posting about rejection going on just now. An interesting piece over at Romancing the Blog, for example (don't skip the comments -- good discussion going on there). For my part, I have no real advice for people who are trying to get published and haven't found a way in yet beyond the standard: you do need an agent; to get an agent, you have to write a story.
And two observations:
1. Lots of people are very bad at self evaluation. They truly believe they are capable of a given task when in fact they lack even basic skills. Watch American Idol, and you'll see what I mean. There's some serious work in psychology which takes a less sensational path to the same conclusion.
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments. An article from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (this is the abstract):
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.
2. Editors make mistakes. Every editor has stories of rejecting books that went on to sell millions of copies and/or win major accolades. Some examples from Rotten Rejections by Andre Bernard:
The Diary of Anne Frank ‘The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the “curiosity” level.’I suspect the primary reason editors send out generic rejection letters is they don't want to be on record saying something dismissive about the next Cold Mountain or The Time Traveler's Wife.Carrie by Stephen King 'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.'
May 20, 2005 10:19 AM
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