Don’t be dogged by rejection

I’m not a rejection junkie. I don’t wallow in them. You send out stories and mostly they come back, mostly with form rejections. You could say it’s not personal, but it is. They don’t want YOUR story. That’s the game, though. It’s stacked against you. You’re a writer. You’d best have a thick hide, and a good dog for company. Cuss a bit and move on. Laugh, if the rejection strikes you as laughable, as sometimes it will.

Last year in this space, I wrote about the journal that rejected a story and then immediately asked me to subscribe, because it “really helps keep us going, and is a great way to keep in touch with our mission, which is always to reproduce the variousness of the impulse to write as a means of increasing the availability of that variousness, for writers.” Now that’s pretty fucking funny, you have to admit.

This week, I had a story rejected by a journal, which I won’t name, because I’m fairly nice guy. The rejection began in the usual way, going on about how the story wasn’t right for the publication, about the decision not being a reflection on my writing, and about the selection process being highly subjective — all perfectly legitmate reasons, except the one about it not being a reflection on my writing; how can it NOT be? But anyway … then came this doozy, which made even my dogs howl with laughter:

Writing is hard work, and writers merit some acknowledgment. This note doesn’t speak to that need.

Huh? What? Really?

So buck up, writers. Bear on. Most of all, keep writing. I can’t say what you’re writing is worth a damn — I haven’t read it. But I feel sure your dog loves you, and it, unconditionally. This blog post speaks to that.