Writing may be the only “profession” that measures success by the quality of failure. While I’ve lost count long ago, I know I must have received thousands of rejections over the years. Some of them have been “successful” rejections from reputable places like Scribners, The New Yorker, The Missouri Review, Boulevard, the new Electric Literature, and many others. Not as good as acceptance, and not nearly as good as being paid, but much better than impersonal forms, although the forms have their place and are an unfortunate necessity. It is almost impossibly difficult for editors to sift through the tons of material received daily. (Often as a result, understandably I think, they sometimes give up and publish the MFA they know.)
Likely, I will share correspondence from agents and publishers as I get them (and may share past successful rejections in other blogs). The following is the most recent one, an email reply after submitting an email query and ten pages of Roobala Take Me Home. Getting my name wrong is understandable — I used to joke about this but it’s not worth it — this is merely another indication of the sheer volume of submissions, the huge number of people willing to submit and to be submissive. However (as far as I can tell based on my thousands of other rejections) the apologetic nature, and the compliment about “merit” are not the norm. I put them in bold.
“Dear Mr. Penn-May, Thank you for submitting to —. Due to large organizational changes, technical issues, and an increased volume of submissions we have not been able to meet our usual projected response time. I want to personally apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and extend my gratitude for your patience. Unfortunately, we will not be requesting further material at this time. While your work contained many merits, the market forces us to be highly selective. Please keep in mind we accept less than 1% of submitted work and the decision-making process is always difficult. We wish you the best with this and future works.”
So celebrate your “failures.”
What has been your “best” rejection?
As with all of my writing, I encourage you to feed this blog to the fish.
