A snowflake, rejected.

I started submitting fiction to SF mags - primarily Interzone - in 1986. I often hear of people submitting hundreds of stories to various markets, but it was nothing like that for me. With access to a typewriter confined to short breaks at home between university terms, my writing only took place in concentrated bursts. I would finish a typewritten story, obtain a photocopy, submit it, then get back to my studies. IZ seldom took less than three to four months to reject my pieces, and I saw no sense in overwhelming them with multiple submissions. I was aware of a handful of other fiction markets (although at that point I had yet to see a single example of an American fiction magazine) but IZ was really the only one I had serious designs on cracking. I must have, somewhere, the rejection slips I acquired from IZ through the years between 1986 and 1989, where I suppose I submitted around five or six original stories. At least, I can't imagine throwing them away. But I do have this, which is the rejection note returned to me upon submission of my story "A Snowflake of Nunivak". My wife has kindly scanned it for me:

The interesting thing, at least to me, is that I was sufficiently moitivated by this rejection (which is what it plainly was) to attempt a redraft of the story. "Deserves another look, and an encouraging letter", wrote Lee Montgomery. "Very promising," said Simon Ounsley. LM and SO were part of Interzone's editorial triumvirate, along with David Pringle, who would go on to edit the magazine singlehandely and play a large part in establishing my career. My redraft, retitled "Nunivak Snowflakes", became my first sale and went on to appear in IZ in 1990. Not long after the sale of Snowflakes, I placed a second piece with them, although this time only LM and DP commented:

This was an acceptance provisional on a rewrite, a much happier state of affairs. Not long after, I met DP and he told me that he considered "Dilation Sleep" to be by far the better of the two stories. Not that he thought it was any kind of classic, mind - just marginally better than the first, and evidence that I might have more than one type of story in me. For me, though, it all hung on "A Snowflake of Nunivak". Had I not managed to sell that piece, who knows what would happened? I felt that I had already given IZ several of my best shots, my PhD studies were taking up more and more of my time, and perhaps this "being an SF writer" lark was something best put on the back burner. Fortunately - for me at least - and with thanks to LM, SO and DP, I had that note of encouragement at just the right time.