FlashFiction.Net

Your submitted piece made it to the discussion round, the final round, the managing editor, but alas, it wasn’t quite right, didn’t quite make it, wasn’t exactly the fit for an emerging mix. On one journal’s online submission database, this note is called “a positive rejection.” I think of it as the “almost” rejection.

That the next submission doesn’t necessarily lead to an acceptance reinforced an important concept to me as a writer: “You are only as good as your current submission.” Of course, my value as a human being is in no way connected to what an editorial board says about my writing (oh, if only that were so!). What I mean is that the near-success of the previous piece doesn’t have much to do with the final decision of the current piece; the piece might make its way past some early layers of the slush with that near-success clinging to it, but ultimately it must stand on its one. In fact, that “almost” might increase expectations for the piece. Yikes!

When I first received a no from a journal who had given me a positive rejection previously, I thought, “Boy, this story must really suck, because I had an ‘in’ and they said no.” What I think the “almost” means is this:  someone or a group of someones didn’t quite love the story enough to say “yes.” And sometimes that missing ingredient inheres in me as a writer, so that anything I write might not quite satisfy their desires. Rather than as a sign of certain future success, then, the “almost” might be also a sign of certain doom, a continual “just-missingness” to story after story sent to this same group. Kind of a Nietzschean afterlife.

Figuring out what that “missingness” might be is of course a subject of much debate. Should writers see rejection as a sign to change the piece, the writing in general, even, dare I say it, themselves? Or should writers possess as “stick-to-itness” in that attempt to find a match between an editor’s or editors’ aesthetics and the pieces being submitted?

Well, this entry lacks a focus, methinks. The “positive” rejection is a tricky message to decipher. I’ve come to view it as a I do all rejections. It sends me back to the story to see what I might re-discover in it, sometimes leading to changes, other times not. To see the piece as other readers might is a skill I’m still developing. It is, though, a wonderful thing for an editor to take the time to respond personally, and I think honoring that time spent to respond personally by taking a hard look at the story is a cool thing to do. Making things is a different process than making things better. The positive rejection says to me, in this case, for this group, I’m almost there.

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