A Week of Glitches

This week: 2 rejections, 1 acceptance, and 2 glitches in the communications of such. I can live with the odds, and am amused by the glitches....

First glitch: I opened up my email inbox to see two emails from the same journal with the same message line. Looked like a rejection to me, with a failure in the system used by the journal to send rejections. So I opened up the older email and it was a form letter rejection. I almost deleted both emails at once, since I have twice now received duplicate rejections from two other journals and really who needs to be told twice? But I decided just before hitting the delete button to open the second email, and it was an apology for the first email, which had inadvertently been sent me, and they actually wanted to accept two poems. So yay for that, and beware, writers: open the duplicate-appearing emails. On occasion they may be more than just repetitive rejections.

Second glitch: a journal solicited work from me, or perhaps not from me, since the solicitation letter came to a name very similar to mine, but slightly different. Still, I had met the editor personally a few months before receiving the solicitation and thought he probably just made a small slip-up, and there were no poets with the name of the email, so I supposed it was me that was being solicited for work. So I sent work. Seven or so months later, I get a rejection from this journal, to the wrong name again, though I had obviously sent the submission with my actual name and mentioned our meeting and such. And it was a form rejection. So, I don't know how personally to take this rejection, and of course I don't know whether I was solicited or not. It's a journal I think is a good strong journal, but this amusing mishap will probably keep me from submitting to them again. I certainly don't expect anyone to know who I am when I send to the slush pile, but having been solicited, I find it all a little odd. I probably had my name entered incorrectly into some database there, but I did give them a chance to update their database, but no go.

Anyway, still pretty good odds, and no complaints...just a bit of head-scratching and wondering.