not our customary rejection: recent lessons from the black hole

Have you noticed that you can’t do anything lately without being asked to fill out a survey? Everybody wants feedback. The car dealership appears interested in what I thought of my recent oil change experience. United wants to know how my flight went. The car rental company is concerned with my thoughts on their service, as is the hotel where I stay every time I take that same business trip. (Still happy? What did you think this time?) That website I visited, the utility company I phoned, my doctor’s office — all deeply concerned with getting helpful feedback.

Sure, the flight attendant was friendly enough. Eight out of ten for answering my call in a reasonable time frame. I give. So why can’t I expect just a little feedback for myself when it comes to my writing?

But no. Here’s how it goes with writing:

You do the hard work. You poke your muse, scramble your heart, wrestle the alphabet and craft a story that feels worth telling. You fight to make it art. You rewrite and rewrite and rewrite again until finally you call it ready. And then you send it out. Because now that you are done writing, you want someone to read it. So out it goes into the black hole of mystery into which we writers deposit our work.

Then one day, many weeks or months later, you go for the mail and see your own handwriting on the famous SASE (self-addressed, stamped envelope) and can pretty much be assured of rejection. Odds are against you. Especially if you happen to write short stories in a category known as literary fiction. Hundreds, maybe thousands of other writers have cast their stories out to that same publication, hoping to claim one of the dozen or so slots in the small literary journal that publishes maybe twice a year. Quarterly if you’re lucky.

Inside that envelope that you so carefully (hopefully!) addressed to yourself back in a headier time is a slip of paper. It has been copied at an angle from a master print out. That apologetic half-slip (why waste valuable paper with such a tiny budget?) contains some version of the standard, “Thanks for the opportunity to read…We receive hundreds of submissions…Not possible to reply…Regret… your work does not fit our needs at this time.” There are subtle variations, but that’s the gist of the typical form.

So you look for the meager signs of hope we writers cling to. Hand signed (an imprint of humanity). Or a sentence fragment (nice work) in nearly illegible scrawl that suggests they actually read it and maybe a real person even enjoyed it. Or best of all, a note, a note saying please submit again. (They did like it and it really just doesn’t fit this time. They wouldn’t encourage more submissions if they didn’t really want to read more. Be still my heart.) The rarest of all is an actual note or email (all of this has its electronic version, the form email) remarking on some actual element of the story, something that hints at why it was not chosen or almost was.

There is often room in the envelope for an additional slip of paper inviting you to please send in some money to become a subscriber to their fine publication or perhaps support their non-profit mission. (All good. All something I believe in. But somehow it feels like a bit of a slap in the face under the circumstances.)

I was a reader for a literary magazine myself for a few years. As a code, I dedicated myself to reading every manuscript at least three pages in before deciding for or against it (what if it had a rough opening, but turned brilliant; it could be edited) and usually read the whole thing. I always wrote at least a sentence on the form letter unless I really believed the person should not be in any way encouraged (rare). It was my personal act of honor for all of our sakes.

My husband is a painter and he gets feedback all the time. This is what frustrates me about writing vs. other arts. Musicians can play for people, even if it's a small crowd, and people either dig it or they don't, and you can pretty much tell without asking. People download your new song and tell their friends. You play a street festival. More people show up.

A painter can begin with a small show and people come up and tell you what they think and then maybe a bigger show and then maybe a gallery. Maybe someone buys a print a takes it home. Someone else sees it and says, “Who did that?” A sculptor can place a piece in the yard and hear what the neighbors have to say.

But we writers send our envelopes or pixels floating out into the unknown and wait. Six weeks, a few months, half a year — sometimes even longer.

Although I am a published writer, lately I can't seem to make it past the nice note stage and mostly it's that pathetic form letter. So I was recently delighted to receive the better-than-average form letter pictured here. Hooray! A small note and the form itself declaring that it was not their typical form letter. This must be the extra special form letter reserved for those above the riff raff of regular rejectees. I must admit I grabbed that branch.

The hard part for me is not knowing if my story got discussed, had a fan along the way or got tossed immediately. Was I a contender? I realize that the places I try for get a ton of submissions. But was I in the top 100 of the thousands or rejected immediately with the first to go? It's a mystery. One answer suggests keep trying and the right editor will finally connect with the work. That it really wasn’t the right fit right now. Another answer says work harder at my day job because this ain't ever gonna happen. It's difficult not knowing where I fit in that continuum. Not knowing how I stacked up. The guy who changes my oil knows. Not me.

Recently I was fortunate to get a glimpse behind the curtain. A writer I know heard the scuttlebutt at a journal where I submitted. Knows that I came close. That I got past the early rounds. That good things were said about my work. Still, I wouldn’t have known that without her generosity, because what I heard back was the standard form letter. Not even a note. It meant a lot to hear anything from the black hole. We writers don’t need all that much to take heart. We can feed on very little.

What you also don’t hear is what fell short. The things that you could work on to make it better, to improve your chances of finding readers. Because there isn’t time. I won’t go into that here — all the reasons why. The overworked volunteer staff, “The State of Literary Fiction in America Today” or all the ways that writing and reading can be reinvented and taken into our own hands, self-publishing, eReaders. This isn’t about that.

This is about the huge act of faith it takes to believe in your own work day after day. To work alone and work hard. To stuff your hand down your throat and feel around for your heart and hand it to someone. To hear essentially nothing in response. To file that nothing away in whatever folder you keep your rejections in and then decide to do it again.

I have a suggestion. Maybe there is a new form letter and it has 5 stars like my restaurant app. Or maybe a scale from one to ten like my car dealer. And the person returning the SASEs can just color in the corresponding star or check the appropriate box that shows where that manuscript falls among the world of possibilities. That tiny gesture would be so much more feedback than we can expect today. Maybe even enough to keep going.