Wednesday Writing Therapy: What Rejections Mean

In short, rejections mean this: "We didn't [blank] your story enough to accept it."

What changes for each journal, each editor, each journal's submissions reader is what word fills that blank. For me, at SmokeLong Quarterly, where I serve as part of the editorial staff, that word is love, but it's not the word for every journal I imagine. My minimalist nature envisions that [blank] as a single word for each, though surely it might be a phrase, as in "We didn't [think our readers would love] your story," and that's fine. I do think that love, or at least like, mostly fills in that blank. At least, that's what I choose to believe, and the world is, it has been said, what we choose to believe it to be.

Each rejection says to me, "We didn't love your story enough." The danger for writers is replacing the [your story] with [you], so that each rejection says, "We didn't love you enough." That has never been the case for me as part of an editorial staff.

I wonder a lot about the essential desire to love stories, wonder what it would mean to accept the stories I kinda-liked, liked okay, liked a lot, and so on. Or it have nothing to do with like or love, but with craft, risk, the surprise of language, my respect of the overwhelming talent, and so on. Of course, all that might be part of why I love or don't love a story, so I'm pretty sure it's all there in some measure. I am often troubled about what it means to ask writers to write stories that I love, rather than what I imagine others might love, or rather than some other overriding quality of the story. That of course is why SLQ has a staff of readers, each one's strong opinion with the power to say "yes" to a story no matter what the others might feel. But still it's an unsettling thing.

As an editor/submissions reader, I sometimes feel a kind of overwhelming desire to say sorry to the stories I didn't love. I wanted to love them. That I didn't and someone else did is always cool, because (and I wonder often if I am wrong about this) as a writer, I wouldn't want my stories in place where they weren't loved, and that leads me to wonder if an editorial staff's love means more to me than readers' love. I would hate to think it does. The journal feels like home, the readers visitors to this home, and I believe (or at least tell myself) that it's great for the story to be in a home where it is loved and visited (now and then) by loved ones. I know that it won't always find love with visitors, but what in the world does? And strong dislike is a strong feeling, and why would I want only to evoke love from readers? (Because I've got issues, that's why!)

We didn't love it, the rejections say, and some of them hint at the possibility of this story finding that love elsewhere. So many of these notes seem to want love for the story, for it to find its place in the world. The rejection isn't something anyone needs to apologize for I realize. Who can say (in an any exact way) why love arises or doesn't arise within us? I Of all things rejections are and aren't, I am most certain about this: if someone loved it, it would be in that journal. Maybe the "right person" needs to love it, and that confuses things. And maybe someone who doesn't like me (& I'm certain they are out there) won't be able to find love for something I've written, and that too confuses things. But whether the love wasn't in the right place or was incapable of being produced no matter what I'd written, I believe love plays a vital role in that decision to accept or reject.

I notice I always write back after being accepted with "I'm so glad you liked it." It's true, and I'm too scared and afraid of appearing presumptuous to say, "So glad you loved it." It's a wondrous thing--isn't it?--when we can think of our story as evoking such a thing in a stranger, and that evoked feeling matters so much more and feels so much more meaningful and real than all the times it doesn't evoke this feeling or sense.

So here's the message to you from the Wednesday Therapy Session: We all, I'm certain, read your story hoping it will matter to us, wanting to love it. And yes, of course, we are likely to transfer that love of story to love of writer to love of you. That, too, confuses things, the way acceptances often lead to our loving you (and your story), while rejections mean our not loving your story (but have nothing to do with our love of you).

Oh, how clear I wanted to make this post. I often wonder how crazy I am for thinking such things. What, pray tell, do rejections mean to you?