I recently found out I accidentally submitted two different stories to the same market at the same time. Somehow I lost track of the first submission, so thought the market was free.

When I got a rejection for the first submission, the one I didn’t have a record of sending, I was mightily confused. My tracking database only showed the second submission, but here was a rejection for a story I thought I hadn’t sent at all. No biggie, I thought… I must have just put the wrong story title in my tracking database. But since I didn’t know for sure, I decided I should email the editor and ask. The first response I got seemed to validate my thinking — the editor was kind enough to double-check the story title for me. Case closed.

Then I got another email from the editor. He’d located the second story, further down in his submissions queue. Oops.

For the record, most markets want writers to send them only one story at a time, and this one was no exception. So I made a mistake, and violated their guidelines. But again, the editor was very nice. He recognized that this was obviously an accident and shrugged it off. He even went ahead and read the second story and gave it a quick critique and rejection along the way.

Moral of the story: Accidents will happen. Writers are human and make mistakes. Fortunately, editors are also human, and recognize this fact. Don’t tread in terror of a vicious, bloodthirsty editor blacklisting you and ending your career because of a simple mistake even long-time pros make.