February 3, 2007
Rejected!
I propose we update the old Beach Boys classic for our purposes here, thusly: "Wouldn't it be nice to air all rejections, to openly celebrate our recent defeats!" So in the "lingering impressions" section, please share the most recent passings on your work, at least for this short month of February . . .
5 comments:
A story submitted to Zoetrope in late February of 2006. Received a response today, early February 2007. A form-rejection slip with my name and the story's name filling in the relevant blanks. And "Many apologies for the delay!" added beneath the words "Best Regards, The Editors". This comes after receiving a kind, analytical paragraph from an editor there about another story sometime last year . . .
On the subject of disappointing follow-up rejections, here we go:
Over the summer I received a letter from the editor at Harper's, who, although rejecting my story, spent a line or two praising its merits. Of course, all aglow with encouragement, I sent another story. A couple of weeks later, I got a letter from the editor...this one thanking me for my "poems" but regretfully denying them. Never thwarted, I sent the guy a third story, and joked about his mistake in my clever cover letter. My third story received a flat rejection, devoid of love, which began, "Dear Mr. Lepucki," as if it were yet another credit card offer.
So, speaking of rejection, if people who post here (or are alma-maternally linked to the people who post here) might like to get accepted somewhere and like maybe have something that's between 1000-2000 words long (or have a spare hour to write something) that tends to be a bit excessively languagey maybe and maybe less sane than some stuff, please consider sending this something to eyeshot.net. Since I know the editor very closely, I could soon after make your submission internationally accessible for as long as I live (and maybe longer). I started the site in 1999 and since then contributors have included several dozen unknown-to-you (and often MFA-uncertified) writers from all over the world (Egypt, South Africa, Romania, Canada, New Jersey), plus a few dudes who graduated from Brown's program, plus a few very well-known writers like Tracey Hill, Daniel Alarcon, Jonathan Ames, Sam Lipsyte, Ryan Boudinot, and, of course, my various ex-girlfriends. Anyway. It would be an honor and delight to receive via e-mail and most likely post anything you send if it's shortish and provocatively intriguing and compelling and drags eyes down the old monitor screen. (Friends, think about how easily this could help fill out your CV for that lucrative adjunct gig teaching intro comp!) As they said circa Y2K, it's a win-win.
A form-rejection letter -- without a trace on pen on it -- received yesterday from Ploughshares. Submission sent in late September. Not bad. Four months!
My boyfriend said I should be "harder to get."
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