There is a wealth of advice out there for unpublished and emerging writers. Much of it is excellent. Some merely states the obvious. And occasionally there is advice that is so counter-productive that it needs to be marked with big red warning lights. Such an article is Jesse Putnam’s “Submission: A Wannabe’s Guide to Rejection” in The Stranger.

If you want to know the secret to surviving rejection, it’s simple: expect it to happen; don’t take it personally when it does; listen to any editorial comments offered in the rejection but don’t take them as gospel; and keep submitting unless you’ve decided on reflection that the manuscript isn’t up to scratch. There, that’s it. Nothing magic about it.

Jesse Putnam, however, believes in making unreasonable demands and insulting editors for not complying.

As you know, there are two daily newspapers in Seattle. What you may not realize is that only one of them is run by egotistical jerks. I have visited both of them and it is indisputable that one outfit is managed by meanies. Can you guess which? Wrong. Liberals like me want to think that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, an honest-to-God liberal media outlet, is home to the good guys. Well, I hate to burst your ideological bubble, but the folks at the P-I are asshats and here’s why:

After writing, calling, and considering sending a singing telegram to the editors at the P-I, I decided, with a push from my job coach/shrink, to deliver a story by hand. But then the woman at the P-I reception desk was cute and I got shy. Since I was after professional (not personal) rejection, I refrained from asking the receptionist out and instead demanded to speak with an editor. Baffled, she picked up the phone, sighed, dialed, waited, told the person on the other end that there was a freelancer in the lobby, paused, and hung up.

“No go?” I asked.

She shook her head. She then told me that though she had worked there for two years, the editor she just called had almost never spoken to her. Jerks.

The only jerk in this story is Putnam. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is a major daily newspaper with a staff of over 200. So the editors don’t often speak to the receptionists and don’t give immediate attention to freelance writers who turn up at the door with unsolicited submissions and no appointment. This doesn’t make them jerks. It makes them busy. Could the editor, perhaps, have been in the middle of an important meeting? It doesn’t even occur to Putnam that editors might have responsibilities beyond himself. And in what weird universe does one’s politics determine one’s style of etiquette?

And then there’s this:

The first thing I learned is that any newspaper can reject. Even the Washington Free Press. Just because only 27 people have ever read it doesn’t mean they will print anything submitted. The editors of the Free Press have the right to reject and, as I found out, they exercise that right freely. Other teeny, tiny publications can reject too, like Seattle Gay News—which frequently advertises for unpaid “staff writer” positions—and the neighborhood papers. Any publication can reject you, no matter how piddly. So while “starting small” sounds like a good strategy, it’s no guarantee that you’ll get published.

Putnam is surprised that small press journals won’t accept anything that flops into their slush pile? Well, here’s some news: the vast majority of small press editors do it for the love of it. They don’t do it for money, because obviously there isn’t any. This means that every issue they put out is a lot of hard work done purely for non-pecuniary reasons — in fact, most small press journals run at a loss that comes straight out of the publisher’s pocket. The editors may be motivated by political discourse, as in the Free Press, or by the desire to help their community, as in Seattle Gay News, or because they want to create a great journal, as in small press fiction magazines.

Because there is little money in small press, it follows that most professional writers will concentrate on paying markets, and the general quality of the content is not as strong as in pro magazines. But it doesn’t follow that small press editors don’t care about the quality of what they publish. In some cases, they publish magazines of extraordinary quality where pro writers are happy to submit for the kudos. To choose one example, the now-defunct Australian journal Eidolon was considered one of the most reliable magazines in its field in the world and included stories from top writers, while paying a mere twenty Australian dollars per story.

Contrary to Putnam’s advice, I would strongly suggest trying small press markets early in your career. I can’t emphasise this enough. Small press is a good start and you aren’t competing with the cream of the world’s writers, as you would be if you submitted to The New Yorker. Getting published, even in a small press journal, is encouraging and teaches writers how to format manuscripts, how the publishing process works, and what sells and what doesn’t. You are also far more likely to get editorial feedback about your submission (especially if it is nearly publishable) where most pro markets will reject your manuscript with a form letter. Listing a few non-pro sales on cover letters will help you when submitting to pro markets. It still doesn’t guarantee a sale — nothing can do that, not even being solicited to submit a piece — but it does mean the editor is going to read the submission a bit more closely if he or she knows you have convinced a few other editors of the value of your work.

Putnam appears to suffer from a common delusion among unpublished writers. He thinks that the primary responsibility of editors is to the writer. It isn’t. Their prime responsibility is to their readers. The editor owes the writer nothing but a timely response to submissions.

This is not to say that all editors are wonderful. The publishing field is as full of mongrels, lazybones, and incompetents as any other industry. Like all writers, I have my own stock of Bad Editor stories and there are a small number of respected markets I won’t submit to because of differences I have had with the editors. But to publicly name and insult editors for what essentially boils down to personality differences is the height of egotism. Bad Editor stories are only to be told to close friends over a soothing ale. Just as the author has a right to expect professional behaviour from editors — for instance, not insulting them in public for poor submissions — so the editor has a right to expect professionalism from writers, even unpublished ones.

Forget Putnam’s whine. If you want a basic tip on how to deal with rejection, try this: (1) Remember at all times that editors have their own taste and their own problems. (2) One editor can’t kill a story — there are thousands of markets out there.