A few weeks ago, I did something both brave and foolish: I submitted the first page of a short story to an anonymous live reading of slush piles. The premise is simple. Your piece is read aloud to a room of listeners—editors among them—who raise their hands whenever they’ve heard enough. Three hands mean the reading stops, and afterward, the editors explain why.
I sat there, heart thudding in my chest, as my story began to unfold. After three paragraphs, two hands went up. The third editor didn’t mind continuing, but two out of three was enough. The reading stopped.
Their comments came quickly and confidently: too much sensory detail, they said. The description was bogging down the narrative. I felt my face flush. I wanted to crawl under the chair. Nobody knew it was mine, but I knew, and in that moment I was embarrassed to claim it.
The very same story—unchanged—was accepted into the anthology I originally wrote it for. In her acceptance note, the editor told me she had tried to edit the piece but found it already complete, describing it as a gift that needed no intervention. What felt, at that live reading, like a flaw—my attention to sensory detail—was, for her, precisely what gave the story its strength.
Two days later, I received another surprise: the piece had also been chosen as one of the runners-up for a magazine’s short story contest.
The same work that two editors dismissed in seconds was praised and celebrated by others.
Every reader carries their own baggage to the page. One editor might crave immediacy and action; another delights in slow, textured description. Some want dialogue-heavy writing; others revel in atmosphere.
When those two editors said my details bogged down the story, I don’t doubt they were being honest. Maybe they were tired that day. Maybe they’d already heard ten openings heavy with description. Maybe their own tastes lean toward the minimal.
But then came other readers, editors, and judges who saw something different. Where one saw clutter, another saw immersion. Where one found hesitation, another found voice.
It’s not that one group was wrong and the other right. It’s that there is no universal “right.”
The hardest lesson for writers is learning what to do with conflicting feedback.
At first, I felt the sting of rejection. I questioned myself. Should I cut half the descriptions? Rewrite the opening entirely? Maybe I had been self-indulgent. Maybe they were right.
But when the acceptance letter and contest placement arrived, it reminded me of something crucial: feedback is always perspective, never verdict.
That doesn’t mean I should dismiss the criticism. It’s still valuable to know that, for some readers, the opening moved too slowly. But it also doesn’t mean I must gut the work to appease them. If I had, I might have robbed the piece of the very qualities others later appreciated.
Subjectivity is frustrating because it makes the writer’s path uncertain. But it’s also liberating. It means there’s room for all kinds of stories, all kinds of voices.
One reader’s “too much detail” is another’s “luscious imagery.” One judge’s “bogged down” is another’s “runner-up.”
This is why rejection should never be taken as the final word on your work. Sometimes it’s a matter of timing, or mood, or taste. Sometimes the piece simply hasn’t yet found the editor who will love it.
That night at the live reading, I left feeling embarrassed and discouraged. But in hindsight, I see it differently. The stop signs were not the end of the road. They were just detours on the way to finding the right readers.
As writers, our task is not to please everyone. That’s impossible. Our task is to write the story as truthfully and powerfully as we can, and then trust it will find its audience.
Two editors said “stop.” But others said “yes.” And that yes is all it takes.
Renato Gandia 