Gender

Hi

I’ve been absent from the group for a while, so apologies if this has been covered elsewhere.

I recently submitted a short story to a magazine, where the majority (apparently all, in fact) of the writers are female. I used a new female pen name with a matching email address. However, being an honest sort of a chap, I did include my real name in the submission email. The submission was rejected.

Now – it may well be that the story just wasn’t good enough. However, I was careful to follow the mag’s guidelines and was fairly confident when I sent it off. Sadly (and somewhat annoyingly) there was no feedback. I’m now mithering about where I went wrong and whether, perhaps, I should have avoided ‘owning up’ in regard to my gender.

Any thoughts would be gratefully received.