Return-Path: Delivered-To: diana@transocean.com Received: from vps.transocean.com by vps.transocean.com (Dovecot) with LMTP id QbpBHkHWlFiPCAAAInt2oQ for ; Fri, 03 Feb 2017 11:13:05 -0800 Return-path: Envelope-to: diana@transocean.com Delivery-date: Fri, 03 Feb 2017 11:13:05 -0800 Received: from [66.23.223.69] (port=47079 helo=carfinderkc.com) by vps.transocean.com with esmtp (Exim 4.87) (envelope-from ) id 1cZjI7-0000va-Gm for diana@transocean.com; Fri, 03 Feb 2017 11:13:05 -0800 Date: Fri, 03 Feb 2017 14:07:31 -0500 From: Noah Blackwell Message-ID: Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit Mime-Version: 1 Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Subject: What is Sears thinking? How the heck can they afford to give this much away? To: diana@transocean.com Reply-To: noah.blackwell@carfinderkc.com X-Spam-Status: No, score=4.9 X-Spam-Score: 49 X-Spam-Bar: ++++ X-Ham-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system "vps.transocean.com", has NOT identified this incoming email as spam. The original message has been attached to this so you can view it or label similar future email. If you have any questions, see root\@localhost for details. Content preview: Don't pull a me, be sure you have a good quality cover letter and/or biographical note prepared before you got to submit. Make sure your cover letter is high quality, and don't go overboard...keep it short, sweet, and simple. Even though a poem of mine was accepted this week, my week was not all positive. I received two rejection letters for a short story i'd been shopping around for a while now, which is never fun. One of the rejections was personal so I though it might be helpful to some of the greener writers here if I shared it. Of course it started out, Thank you for sending us. We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. At first I was disappointed by this but I realized after sitting on it for a little while that I should be happy that they took the time to read it at all. Just because you get rejected doesn't mean the whole thing was pointless, you got someone to read your work. And that should make you happy. The letter went on to say You have the beginnings of a good story but it still needs work. And continues by giving me advice that I should show more than I tell in my writing. While I personally think this advice is a tad cliche, I appreciated the sentiment and responded positively despite the rejection. As I'm writing my first real post on /r/writing about my own writing career or whatever you would refer to it as, I realize for someone who writes as often as I do I have a real problem properly articulating thoughts when it comes to my own writing. So, I apologize for that. All i'm trying to say is, don't let any magazine or publisher discourage you from writing, but take each critique to heart and decide for yourself whether they are worth while. And as always, keep writing. If you keep writing and mix your natural talent with the skills you learn from practice anything is achievable, from an acceptance in a small magazine, to the New Yorker, to a book deal. [...] Content analysis details: (4.9 points, 5.0 required) pts rule name description ---- ---------------------- -------------------------------------------------- 0.0 URIBL_BLOCKED ADMINISTRATOR NOTICE: The query to URIBL was blocked. See http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/DnsBlocklists#dnsbl-block for more information. [URIs: carfinderkc.com] -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record -0.0 SPF_HELO_PASS SPF: HELO matches SPF record 0.0 HTML_EXTRA_CLOSE BODY: HTML contains far too many close tags 0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message 0.8 BAYES_50 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 40 to 60% [score: 0.4727] 0.6 HTML_IMAGE_RATIO_04 BODY: HTML has a low ratio of text to image area 0.7 MIME_HTML_ONLY BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts 0.8 CPANEL_LOTS_OF_EMPTY_LINE_HTML RAW: Spam that has large block of empty html lines 2.0 RDNS_NONE Delivered to internal network by a host with no rDNS 0.0 T_REMOTE_IMAGE Message contains an external image X-Spam-Flag: NO

Don't pull a me, be sure you have a good quality cover letter and/or biographical note prepared before you got to submit. Make sure your cover letter is high quality, and don't go overboard...keep it short, sweet, and simple. Even though a poem of mine was accepted this week, my week was not all positive. I received two rejection letters for a short story i'd been shopping around for a while now, which is never fun. One of the rejections was personal so I though it might be helpful to some of the greener writers here if I shared it. Of course it started out, Thank you for sending us. We appreciate the chance to read it. Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. At first I was disappointed by this but I realized after sitting on it for a little while that I should be happy that they took the time to read it at all. Just because you get rejected doesn't mean the whole thing was pointless, you got someone to read your work. And that should make you happy. The letter went on to say You have the beginnings of a good story but it still needs work. And continues by giving me advice that I should show more than I tell in my writing. While I personally think this advice is a tad cliche, I appreciated the sentiment and responded positively despite the rejection. As I'm writing my first real post on /r/writing about my own writing career or whatever you would refer to it as, I realize for someone who writes as often as I do I have a real problem properly articulating thoughts when it comes to my own writing. So, I apologize for that. All i'm trying to say is, don't let any magazine or publisher discourage you from writing, but take each critique to heart and decide for yourself whether they are worth while. And as always, keep writing. If you keep writing and mix your natural talent with the skills you learn from practice anything is achievable, from an acceptance in a small magazine, to the New Yorker, to a book deal.