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Friday, April 08, 2005

Rejection

Nick Carbo proves rejection comes in many forms.

Now a month or so ago, I received a rejection letter from a west cost literary journal that I imagine you'd all recognize - it contained a scrap of paper no doubt torn (emphasis on torn) from an 8-1/2 by 11 size sheet of paper. The 8-1/2 was still there, but I got about one inch of the 11 portion.

For a brief moment I looked at the paper which spoke to me in words that said ...we get a fucking trunk load of submissions, we are way too busy for this... and, "sorry, it is not what we are presently looking for."

Now don't get me wrong, I am sure that the fact of the matter is they do receive a ton of material each month. But when you send a self-addressed-stamped envelope, you would think the least they could - no, make that want to do is to appear somewhat professional in their correspondence. I don't so much mind the "strip of paper" but hell, at least cut it so it looks like a strip of paper and not a scrap.

Yes, for a brief moment, I wanted to reply with a rejection letter myself saying, "I'm sorry, but your rejection letter what not what I was looking for and seems to contract with my present collection, therefore I will not be using it but I wish you well in your rejection endeavors and do try us again. Hee-he. Of course even the rejected can dream!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I too have thought about sending rejection letters for rejection letters. I guess we all have stories of getting roughed up by this mag or that.

Please do "out" that magazine. It will help us all to know.

Michael A. Wells said...

David...
I see no value to "out" the Journal. They are not alone in that I think most all of us can point to a Journal or two that we've had some degree of negative related to the responses from our submissions. Some take forever to reply and then only after follow up which is another thing that not only goes to professionalism, but just to common courtesy. It would not be fair for me to single one out. My point for the post was simply to try to make a bit of humor about something we all deal with at one time or another. I’m not trying to shame them. I figure they can do that far better than I could. Besides, otherwise they are a fine Journal.

Unknown said...

I guess I was just being a gossip whore.

One time I received a rejection from a very fine mid-western magazine with a small 3x3 piece of white paper. No label, no masthead, no signature. All it said in a scribbled handwritten note was, "Very close. Very, very close." Not even initials. :-)

Michael A. Wells said...

You know what... I don't think that's half-bad. It may not look professional - but at least it was hand written.