{"id":2949,"date":"2008-04-13T18:10:49","date_gmt":"2008-04-13T23:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=2949"},"modified":"2008-04-13T18:10:49","modified_gmt":"2008-04-13T23:10:49","slug":"the-truth-will-set-you-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=2949","title":{"rendered":"The truth will set you free"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neil Gaiman, as is his wont, shares some useful advice<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I remember once being taken to task by Rachel Pollack for something in a short story I’d written. “But that’s the only bit in the story that’s true!” I told her. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true,” she said. “What matters is if, in the context of the story, it’s believable.” And I knew that she was right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was recently taken to task myself — actually, I believe the word used was “asshole” — by a writer submitting a story to Kaleidotrope<\/i>, who felt that I’d somehow insulted him by not falling instantly in love with it. Obviously I was rejecting the story only because I couldn’t handle its deep and affecting truth. It wasn’t, as I thought I had politely alluded to in my rejection letter, that I felt the story was over-written, sloppy, and difficult to get into — or even that it simply wasn’t the type of story I was looking to publish in the pages of Kaleidtrope<\/i>. No, when I rejected it, I was obviously rejecting and insulting its truth — and, by extension, rejecting and insulting its author, to whom, presumably, that truth had happened.<\/p>\n

You really can’t argue with someone like that. Beyond the unprofessionalism of calling an editor who rejects your story an asshole because of that — even if you are convinced that he is<\/i> an asshole, never, ever do this — there’s a real misconception about what makes a story work going on there. A story can be full of fact and still not be any good. A rejection of the story isn’t a rejection of the author, or of the truth. It’s just a rejection of weak writing.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neil Gaiman, as is his wont, shares some useful advice: I remember once being taken to task by Rachel Pollack for something in a short story I’d written. “But that’s the only bit in the story that’s true!” I told her. “It doesn’t matter if it’s true,” she said. “What matters is if, in the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-2949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}