Form Rejections

Mood: plodding. Music: Tori Amos--Beekeeper. Writing: nothing today. Today's Quotes: "I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top."  ~English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University. "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."  ~Author Unknown, commonly misattributed to Samuel Johnson

********

So okay, given those quotes, maybe form rejections aren't all bad. In fact, the first one I received made me feel pretty good because it was addressed: Dear Author. They called me an author! Pretty heady stuff. But after 6 or 7 of those letters, it no longer has the same effect. When a publishing company responded to my query letter by requesting my manuscript, a big part of me was pretty sure I'd still get rejected. But there was that small part. The part called hope that dies hard. So it wasn't that I didn't expect rejection--it was that it was a form letter that told me nothing--taught me nothing. I'm a teacher, and so I'm always looking for that teachable moment. I have to continually remind myself that editors and publishing companies are not in the teaching business. It's poor comfort.

The biggest comfort came from friends who are writers--who have been there, done that. Just having another writer (a more experienced writer) say, "Form rejections suck," helped me feel better. I'm not the only one who has had to endure this. And it does suck, but there it is. And then I had another writer (published at that) tell me she has heard editors say that if they have no intention of publishing a MS, they don't want to make comments that might be taken by the author for revision. They feel any comments should be left for an editor who is interested in publishing the manuscript. That made me feel better too. At least I can see the logic in it.

Form rejections still suck, but my writing group gave me good suggestions for revisions on my second manuscript, and other writing friends encouraged me to keep writing, to believe, to trust. And even though that's hard for me right now, it's okay, because they are willing to trust and believe for me. And I'll pick it up again soon. After all, Alfred Kazin said (Think, Feb. 1963), "The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax."