Yesterday reminded me about the importance of feedback. I maybe a sucker for encouragement feedback but it's surprising how much I thrive on it and find I need it even.

I've written here about my efforts to write haiku and to write Traveller material. It's not been a bad year for occasionally having haiku published and it's been an astonishing year for the amount I've both written (I wrote here before about why I think I've been more inspired) and also had published in the Traveller universe.

Until a couple of months ago that was when things seemed to dry up. Not quite sure why.

When things were being published - nearly instantly sometimes - it was sufficient feedback in itself. Acceptance emails or other commentary isn't generally a feature of any of the three editors I submit to (although one responds to queries very helpfully). But if the piece in question is published, it's not particularly a problem.

The difficulty comes when submissions aren't being used.
Is it just not good enough?
Are there just too many other good articles?
Does the editor want to balance content? Authorship?
Have I done something to offend?!

It would appear I can discount #3 above as some journal issues have only articles by one author and/or on one subject.
Difficult to think of anything I might have done on #4.
And it's hard to see much difference in quality in what I've contributed which would rule out #1
I shall optimistically hope for #2 and see if the new year brings any change.

Perhaps I'm just overly sensitive as one of the submissions was my first attempt at a fully fledged adventure. All 7000 words of it, with pictures (and even a fake bibliography!). What's worse is that I sent it for comment to an acquaintance who I'd also sent some physical books to - and he seems to have dropped off the face of the planet!

It's interesting comparing the above with the world of haiku where editors are pretty good at the whole acceptance/rejection thing - so at least you know where you stand. On good days, you might even get commentary on why something was rejected which can be really useful.

Good feedback is exceedingly hard to do. Being critical but not demoralising is a fine line to tread and my hat's off to the editors who manage it.