Calling people on the phone is a thing of the past. I'm sure of it. Any time I ring, expecting to speak to an actual person, I get this recorded message. That’s fine if everything goes as expected. But I'm not sure how often that really is. In the end I made three phone calls instead of one. The voice recording, which is supposed to respond to my voice, gave me the run around until that last call. For some reason everything worked that final time. I'm still not happy about it, but the reason I called in the first place has all been sorted, finally. I decide to make another call and get yet another recorded message. What happened to people? I had to leave a message and now I don't get that extra sleep I'm desperate for, because I'll be sitting here waiting for them to call me.

I wrote all that to point out that sometimes we're pushing all the right buttons and saying all the right things, yet we aren't getting the response we need. This couldn't be more true that with writing. You do your homework and find the correct writer's guidelines. You follow them to the letter. You submit your query/article or you ring first with your idea, and yet nothing happens. Or you write a terrific short story and enter it to another competition. You've stuck to the submission guidelines; you've worked on your prose, description, characters and plot. You even make sure the entry gets in well before the deadline. But your piece is not selected to win a place in the competition.

Why is this? What are you doing wrong?

Most likely you are doing everything right. Sometimes you have to hang up and try again. The first short story I ever had published I sent out a total of three times. The last time I changed the title. I still don't know if that third editor would've liked the story with the old title or she'd have loved the piece without the change. All I know is that time it worked. I hit the mark and got the piece accepted into the magazine for publication. The feeling still lingers in memory even now.

I've entered competitions with stories I know are top quality, but when I hear the winning entry read aloud I can only scratch my head. What made that story better than mine? Sometimes I'll share this with other writers and they feel the same way. Other times when I hear the winning entry read aloud I know it's because the winning tale was far superior to my own. But it's up to the judges. This fact is something you cannot change or manipulate to your favour. It might help if you know who the judges are, perhaps. But you can never know just what appeals to them in the long run.

This is what makes writing a subjective exercise no matter what. I've been baffled by the meanings of stories selected as winners in some competitions. Sometimes these tales just go right over my head. I've sat in stunned stupor over some silly short story a magazine chose to publish over my own. Once I entered a short story, in the fantasy genre, in a local competition. I didn't win, but felt the winner deserved to. I sent the story out to various magazines and eventually received a bite in a low paying magazine. Later I sent the same story to a website and received a glowing email about the tale from the editor. She loved it, but the subject was something she really related to at that point of her life. Had I sent it earlier she may not have reacted that way.

What I'm saying is back to the second paragraph of this entry; you can be doing all the right things and still get nowhere. Your writing is good. The subjects, content, information and style works. You send your piece out and it returns to you unaccepted, unappreciated. The editor or judge just didn't see the piece as quite right for their publication. This is one reason to resubmit as soon as you know the magazine switches editors. The new editor might just gel with your piece where the other didn't.

Anyway, I'm still waiting for that phone call. Keep writing and don't give up.