Form rejects!

Good noon, ladies and gentlemen! As promised, I have woken up refreshed and ready to write the wittiest of all witties on Form Rejects. Unfortunately, I do not currently have a computer (another rant for another time) and so I am typing on my brother's sticky, duct-taped-together machine that will, any moment, explode.

I mentioned yesterday my intent to enter the Rejectionist's uncontest - a "Happy One-Year Birthday, Rejectionist!" activity. All y'all, if you have any interest in publishing or literature or amusing, should read her blog. I promise it will be more rewarding than mine. (Actually entering this uncontest is, by the way, the scariest thing I've ever done. Though being rejected by the Rejectionist would actually be pretty badass.)

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Form Rejects:

There are two types of form rejects I could tell you about: the ones I hand out and the ones I receive. I receive far fewer than I hand out, because I haven't yet reached the point in my writing where I have anything...oh, what's the word...good to submit. Both of these rejections I've always found ambiguous. There are just so many QUESTIONS you have when you recieve a letter that starts "Dear Author." (Did they read it? Do they hate me? Did they hate it? Who read it? Why didn't they like it? Was it just that I forgot to put a plot? Was it that I wrote a stripper story for a children's magazine? Should I submit elsewhere or chuck this one?) But I can see one major difference between the rejections I give and the ones I get.

Every form reject I have GOTTEN from a literary magazine has told me some variation of the following: "Please understand that we get almost 300/1000/1 million/everyone in Utah's submissions and simply have no time/space/energy/love for the mediocre word vomit of a college crazy." (From "love" on, I may have embellished.) All of these FRs seem to go out of their way to make me feel as though my work wasn't BAD, it was just lost among the many and didn't POP their brains. This may not be exactly how it went down, but it's nice to know I'm one of millions of unexceptional people, right?

We don't do that, and as a result my understanding of FRs I've received has utterly changed. The FRs I send reads (I'm going from memory here): "My editorial staff has reviewed your submission carefully and we regret to inform you that it is not appropriate for our magazine at this time. We wish you luck in placing it elsewhere." First off, this is a total lie most of the time. It should read: "My kind of crazy first reader/Lowly Intern read this and thought it was, you know, really bad. Feel free to try again...but, uh, better, please. Kthxbai."

Not always, though! Every now and then (I get maybe three per week) a piece DOES make it through the entire editorial staff before being sent back to Lowly Intern with a post-it that says "plz form reject, thx." (We are full of the English and the grammar. No rly.) Hooray, you say! So there was a chance my work was poured over by many eyes, all going back and forth and back and forth and finally, painfully, they parted with me, a lonely tear rolling down each editorial cheek.

Well, no. If you get through the whole staff only to get a form reject, it's because every single person recommended a "no." If, on the other hand, you were to receive a FR with a handwritten note at the bottom, a) Hi! That was me! Nice to meet you! I probably didn't read your story because it was probably submitted like four months ago but damn it I found something nice to say anyway! and b) THAT means everyone poured over it and is letting it go with tears rolling down the royal cheeks, etc.

So of the two other options, how could you possibly know? Well, hint: if your story was about racist flying man-eating goldfish, that should read "Lowly Intern could not even finish your story WHY ARE YOU CRAZY." If you, a mature adult, wrote 27 pages about how you KNOW your dog can talk, your FR should take the form of Lowly Intern banging her head on her desk. Otherwise, I cannot help you.

So if it makes you feel best to think "Oh whatevs, some pretentious 20-year-old English major didn't like me. So what?" You keep on truckin, writer-friend. If you'd rather think that everyone read it, and Lowly Intern forgot to put your handwritten note on the bottom (LI is, of course, lazy and stupid, being a pretentious 20-year-old English major, remember) then think that, because we deal in ambiguity and you deal in flying goldfish and grandmothers dressed up as Tinkerbell.

I had hoped that my foray into the publishing world, however brief, would do wonders for my ability to understand the intricacies of the form reject. Alas, I say, no luck. If I got a form reject from myself, I would put it in the stack and ask myself all the same questions. Then I would conclude that I am not worth too much worry and bitter regret. After all, I'm only the intern.

One thing you can note, having received a FR from me, your lovely bloggy friend. You certainly were not one of the many. I remember you, fair rejects. I remember you.