Reee- jected!

A writer’s life is one of constant and unrelenting rejection.

In many ways it reminds me of when I was just about to enter my teen years and starting to learn the ins and outs (mostly outs) of getting girls to notice me.  It recalls the weeks of prep-work and mental loin-girding it took me to summon up the courage to ask Debbie if I could carry her books to our next class. 

Though it may come as a shock to you, the book-carrying was just a ruse. It was a strategy that might easily have been employed by Napoleon or Patton or even Alexander the Great under similar circumstances.  After all, Debbie was more than capable of carrying her own books—even the particularly dense and unwieldy social studies one.  But book-carrying was really the only lingua-franca between boys and girls in their pre-drivers-license larval stage, and so it was the only tool in my toolbox at the time.

But my implementation of the book-carrying gambit was so clever that I’m sure Debbie was completely unaware of my real intent, which was to be able to walk beside her for the twenty yards it took to get to the next class. Those twenty yards, my own longest mile, were not only an opportunity to prove to her that I was more than capable of carrying two sets of books (the minimum standard of viability for a pre-pubescent male in those days), but that I could also carry on sparkling and high-brow conversations at the same time.  For example: “Hey, how ‘bout them social studies, huh?  What’s up with that? Think they’ll serve pizza in the cafeteria today?” 

Such were the lines that most certainly would have turned Helen of Troy’s head (possibly to suppress a yawn).

Anyway, those were my plans, and after going over them in my head for weeks, I carried them out flawlessly, only to be told by her that Philip had put in a bid for the exact same service just the day before.  As if on cue, Philip appeared, casting a shadow over the whole proceeding and complicating things needlessly. I won't say he thwarted my plans, but there was definitely thwartage in the area. He picked up her books and off they went, laughing and tossing their perfect hair while the fluorescent lights gleamed on their perfect skin. They were living their best life, while I was left to pick up the pieces of my shattered soul and try to put them back together with duct tape and baling wire.

Similarly, sending out your writing to other people to be appraised for publication is leaving yourself open to a spate of spiritual concussions.  There’s the writing of the piece itself, of course.  It is almost quite literally a pouring of your heart and soul into this thing that, though now separate from you, is nevertheless still a part of you.  You love it and tend to it and mold it and shape it and burnish it until you are quite certain it will win Best In Show.  Or maybe Best In Breed.  Or at least some sort of honorable mention or a coupon for 20% off our next purchase at Denny’s.  Anything.  Just some sort of recognition that your creation doesn’t suck.

But, much like my book-carrying analogy above, there are so many things that are beyond our control once we cast our desires (or manuscripts) to the wind.  What if I had asked Debbie a day earlier for the exclusive rights to convey her books from class to class for the low, low price of her having to endure my witty repartee enroute?  What if my hair had been perfect rather than Philip’s?  What if, halfway to Social Studies, Philip had been sidelined with an unfortunate book-carrying injury and I was the next man up? What if Debbie had been buried under an avalanche of book-carrying quotes, and, after sorting through a few dozen of them, had, out of sheer exhaustion, ended up going with the one printed on the highest GSM stationery?

The point is, there are any number of reasons our submissions are rejected, and so we can’t take it personally.

Except that we do.