Like a Rash–but at Least It’s Not in the Bikini Zone
It's Not Contagious, I Promise
You may find what I’m about to share with you disgusting. It’s not exactly that I revel in your discomfort, but I generally have a greater interest in sensitive information than most people I know. Often sensitive information is useful and meaningful. It is under that premise that I am about to over share.
I’ve gotten a few nice rejections and a mother lode of form rejections, but until last week I had never received a personalized mean rejection before. Here is what one journal emailed me:
The streamlined form and the play with language in “Snoqualmie” make it a more intriguing poem than the other two. The language of both “Seattle 275″ and “I Can’t Reduce…” seems too casual to me, even flat. Consider, in all of these poems, the human/more-than-human relationship more carefully. Reach for a more sophisticated articulation of the “I”‘s awareness of the place of the human in the world–whether wild or civilized.
At first when I read it, I thought it was very interesting. It was nice to have some of my weaknesses as a writer laid out for me.
Then I started to feel stupid. Like the tongue to the chipped tooth, my mind kept returning to the comments, imagining them even harsher than they were. I began to think of myself as a simple, inane person, as vapid as the people I so often describe so.
Then I thought it was generous that someone went to the trouble to write comments on my work at all.
Then I remembered the notes I’ve exchanged with other editors about manuscripts and thought how horrible it would be if we started sending those to writers. Was that what I got by mistake?
No, the reviewer seems to want me to know this information about my work, wants me to quit with the unsophisticated articulation of “I,” which I clearly haven’t learned yet to apply.
Finally, I am grateful for the comments in that I hope to consider myself more deeply not human, articulate wild, and sophisticate the sharp points of formality.
What do you think about rejections? What would be helpful to know/not know? How brutal is helpful? What have been your best and worst rejections so far?
I think the form letter is better, based solely on the idea that any editors reaction to a piece is subjective (we all know this).
Here’s the reason I have given up on listening to personal rejections:
About a year ago, I wrote a story and did a first edit. It was around the time when most literary journals close at the end of May, so I slipped it in during one of the last days at AGNI. They rejected it after 2 weeks, but included this in the rejection:
“We found the writing lively and interesting and enjoyed reading it. This is not our customary rejection. We hope you’ll keep us in mind.”
Looking at Duotrope stats, I discovered that only about 10% of AGNI rejections are personal and this led me to believe “Oh, AGNI took it seriously and found the writing lively and interesting and enjoyed reading it. It should be picked up by another magazine in no time.” So rather than go back and look over the story to see what I could improve, doing another edit, I sent it out to something like 20 more places as it was. Well, half a year passed, and the story didn’t get picked up. I decided to look at the story again, and while I didn’t think it was bad, I realized it needed a hell of a lot of work. This is one situation in which a promising rejection sort of threw me off course.
Another instance, if you look at duotrope, is Missouri Review. I love the magazine and the editors there offer 30% personal rejections, but when you receive that nice hand written note from them, go to their website and look at who signed it. Now I in no way here want to demean the work of interns because they’re important to the process, but when you receive a personalized rejection from them, you tend to feel/realize that the work that they’re giving you nice feedback on isn’t even reaching the upper echelon of editorial staff. Or maybe it is. I obviously can’t say for sure. I can only point out that my personal rejections from this site have never been signed by one of them.
On the other hand, does it really mean that much more if your note is signed by the editor in chief him/herself? A rejection still means that it’s not getting published and they didn’t want it.
My point here is that, while it’s really nice to receive encouragement when someone thinks your work is good or an assessment of what someone things are the weaknesses of your writing (after all, they have taken the time to scribble a few lines down), never take it all that seriously. There may be a grain of truth in it and you can run with that, but for the most part, you’re getting one person’s opinion and not absolute fact.
Keep writing and revising, try not to worry too much about where it’s going to get published.
But for some of us, the danger is in over-revising. I have had teachers tell me that all of my earlier versions were better than my revisions.
Isn’t there danger in taking too much significance from rejections (assuming the piece is not done just because it was rejected)? As editors we know there is lots of work that gets rejected that is “good” or that we like and we don’t always write personal comments on even these pieces. Do we?
In some ways the whole process feels utterly random to me. But I suppose there is order in chaos.
It’s hard to know where the line is. I once got an email actually accepting an essay, and the editor told me that it had been ‘an unpleasant read, in many ways.’ Kinda stung…but still, I do appreciate even a few scrawled sentences on the form rejection; much more than a blank form rejection.
Did you get a chance to revise the essay before it was published–did you want to? Did the editor end up falling helplessly in love with your essay?
Different submission process, but still stings: I am currently working on revision #3 of my book manuscript. Reviewer #2 says she still doesn’t understand why she should want to read my book as a means to getting me to rewrite the introduction. Ouch. Right now, the problem is that I don’t know why she should want to read my book.
Anna! It is so good to see you here! Give me that manuscript and I’ll tell you all the reasons the entire world will want to read your book.
Out of all the impersonal rejections I’ve collected, wishing for some more feedback, I’m not sure I’d want the kind you got there, Shira. Maybe I’m just defensive, but something about that one strikes me as unwelcome, from a writer’s point of view.
It’s not that we don’t need to hear critical feedback and respond to it. I really do think learning to do that is a lot more important than finding “supportive” feedback, as much as I want support.
But that just strikes me as presumptuous or over-reaching, and imperious in tone. Also, what in the world does it mean? Perhaps you’ve got the articulation of the “I’s” awareness of the place of the human in the world pitched right where you want it. Or maybe I just think that kind of expression is a crock — i wouldn’t have any idea how to respond to it, in terms of writing advice, and I think that’s the worst kind of criticism.
Shawn, I find it (lavishly) helpful to read your comment that, “Perhaps you’ve got the articulation of the “I’s” awareness of the place of the human in the world pitched right where you want it.” It is nice to receive some affirmation of faith from a writer I respect so much.
I think the “I” is where she needs to be in that poem. But this “I” definitely needs to continue to develop and mature. The above-quoted editor, imperious as he/she may sound, has tried to give me some idea of how to negotiate my maturation route. And I appreciate any direction pointers at this point. The editor’s comments can become fun if I see them as a new way to play with the process of writing.
i think you’re right to try and take the comments in a positive vein. when i see the defensiveness of others (or myself, after the fact) in response to criticism, i always think it’s not very useful, and it can only harden into a resistance that will not benefit the work.
The personal rejection matters to me. It always has. The attitude that a rejection is a rejection is a rejection is, well, the only way to be a writer. We all have to have thick skin, and in the end, a rejection, no matter how nicely it may be phrased, is still a No Thanks.
At The Missouri Review, we receive 13000 submissions per year. I started at Natural Bridge (about 1000), then moved to River Styx (about 2000); even at those publications a personal note was time consuming given all the things we had to accomplish as a staff. Taking the time to write a small, personal comment about the story – or poem or essay – is a real sign of belief in the writer. The sheer volume of submissions makes even one sentence challenging. At TMR (and at River Styx and Natural Bridge, too) every piece gets read carefully, and here, interns are taught how to read work and, when in doubt, to pass the piece up to a senior editor. The senior staff read a tremendous amount of submissions.
When I write a personal rejection, I want the writer to know that her/his work stuck with me, even if ultimately we can’t publish the piece. I want the writer to know that she/he should submit work again, and that I don’t write that lightly. I may be wrong – I’m wrong all the time – and the writer, like Shira, may find that the editor isn’t correct about the work. But the personal response, in a field that is often far too impersonal, is always a good gesture, and for what it’s worth (however little that might be), the writer should remember that. I appreciate those personal responses when I receive them, and I always remember why when I write them.
Hi, Michael! Glad to see you’re reading Bark. Thanks for the comment. I hope things are going well at TMR.
It is nice/important to know that you stood out from the deluge of submissions in some way. Sometimes the comments on a particular piece may not help one re-write that piece, but, in the case of the rejection quoted above, I like the idea of re-thinking the complexity of the human/not-human intersection for future writings. I enjoy having an “assignment” of sorts, a way to reframe the way I approach thinking and writing. When editors, these people who have been designated as having particular insightful, take time to present a personal offering, I can’t help but try to take it seriously. I suppose that is the danger–that we take these morsels too seriously.
Thanks for that info and the look inside, Michael. I hope you didn’t take my comment as diminishing the importance of the written message in a writer’s self-esteem because it does matter a great deal. And I also wasn’t trying to say that writers should be unappreciative of the editors or interns taking that time to write something.
My point, if I can clarify a little better, is that despite the written rejection, a writer really needs to just focus on making the work the best it can possibly be when sending it out, while bearing in mind that no matter how much someone likes it in that personal rejection , the next ten magazines might see nothing in the story and just snap out with a form and the story remains unpublished.
Of course, that personal rejection might remind the writer that someone out there has seen something pertinent in the story and recognized talent, and that can be integral to trying again and remaining persistent. But at the same time, the writer really needs to develop the self-confidence to believe in his or her self no matter how hard a tool that might be to develop. If you rely on outside sources to bolster your drive, it’s going to be tough to get anywhere.
In the end, what I’m trying to say (and I feel I’m muddling up the message again) is that getting a personal rejection makes us happy, but it doesn’t mean your story is necessarily good in the same way that getting a form rejection doesn’t mean your story is bad. I think it needs to be taken for what it is, one person out of many many potential readers liked it.
I’m always overly optimistic when it comes to rejections and should probably practice more of the self-awareness of how much my work needs more work that Jason describes in his comments. I hate the form rejection letter, but like it better than not hearing anything for months and months. Whenever I get a personal note, mean or nice, I’m embarrassingly pleased that someone actually took the time to read my work and childishly happy that I got a reaction. That said, mean comments stick with me for a long time and sometimes makes it hard to sit back down to write anything at all. A mean comment also means it takes a while before I submit again.
I sort of like not hearing back for months and months. It lets me live in a (clearly false) state of hope. This ridiculous hope gets me through.
I have to say that sharing this rejection letter is helping me move on from the comments, make the parts that shred my sense of competence and intelligence become amusing in my mind. Maybe next time you get a not-necessarily-nice rejection, Asa, you should send it to me and we can deconstruct it! You should also send me your nice rejections so we can celebrate them. And, of course, let me know about all of your publications so I can read your work and support the publishers who have good sense.
You’re on Shira! My latest message from and editor was kind of a rejection/acception combo. They liked my nonfiction piece, just wanted it about half as long, and would like me to include bullet points(!). I’m not too proud (or maybe a better way to put it is that I am desperate enough)to do exactly what the editor suggested. :-)
I tend to side with desperation. It isn’t as bad as some people might think.
Agreed.
I’m just happy when the corner of the page that is stapled has a crease in it, so I know they read more than the first page.
I never thought to look for that! Thanks Pete.
[...] on paper plummeted to the lowest low when Monday’s mail brought two rejection letters. Scott, Shira, and Sam have already “barked” on the subject and I don’t have anything to add other than [...]
[...] on paper plummeted to the lowest low when Monday’s mail brought two rejection letters. Scott, Shira, and Sam have already “barked” on the subject and I don’t have anything to add other than [...]
I literally jumped out of my chair and denacd after reading this!
Articles like this just make me want to visit your wesitbe even more.
I don’t think brutal is necessarily helpful. Candid, yes.