AFSG (Always Follow the Submission Guidelines)

Recently, I committed the nigh-unforgivable writerly sin of failing to follow the submission guidelines. I will pause a moment to soak in your righteous and fully justified finger-wagging.

Ouch.

Okay, my particular sin was submitting a story that did not meet the word count requirements. This particular market wanted stories with a minimum length of 2,000 words, and I sent in a story that was a tad below that. They were gracious enough to let me resubmit the story after I revised it to fit th...