Every time I get a rejection, I do my best to send the story back out quickly.  I’m holding steady at 30 subs, but my recent batch of rejections has been rough.  

I got an Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future.  That’s better than a slap in the face, but it also means that I’m not going to win this quarter.  

One of my shortlisted stories was too close in tone to other works the market had already published.  

Another story "came very, very close."  

Another missed because the editor doesn’t like flash, and I didn’t quite overcome that bias.  

I could keep going.  Nearly all of the markets that have rejected me in the past couple weeks have encouraged me to send them more stuff.  

This is a good thing.  It’s just maddening to keep missing by such a slight margin.  I’m tired of "almost good enough."  Of course, the only thing I can really do about it is keep writing and keep submitting.  So that’s what I’m doing.