In Praise of Rejection Slips

Despite its being the new year, the year I vowed that Everything Is Going to Be Different This Time, I am back in my same old listless lethargy of limbo, waiting to hear the fate of certain writing projects, utterly paralyzed until I do.

Here’s the worst thing: I may NEVER hear.

Once upon a time, there was such a thing as the “rejection slip,” an actual letter you would receive in the actual U.S. Postal Service mail, rejecting your work. It was often a letter typed by an actual human being.

I was once one of those human beings. When I worked for Scholastic’s Four Winds press as an editorial secretary, some 40 years ago, it was part of my job to type those rejection letters. When I submitted one of my own manuscripts to Scholastic under a pseudonym (a story for another occasion!), I had the dubious honor of typing a rejection letter TO MYSELF.

It became a bragging point to amass rejection letters. People would say things like, “Every rejection letter is bringing you closer to that first acceptance!” Published authors doing school visits would bring their bulging folder of rejections to show the students. “These are all the rejections I received just on THIS BOOK!” The students would gasp obligingly. One writing teacher I knew would give a prize to the student who received the class’s first rejection.

 Ah, those were the days!

Nowadays, publishers don’t bother sending rejection letters. On their website they say something like, “If you don’t hear from us within six months, assume we aren’t interested.” But it sounds a lot like, “We already know we aren’t interested! We will never even take a glance at your work! But go ahead and send it anyway, ha, ha!”

 Of course, this is partly our fault. Back then, professional etiquette forbade “simultaneous submissions.” You were supposed to submit to one publisher at a time, wait for your rejection, and THEN submit to the next one. And you had to mail in your bulky manuscript with a SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope) for its return. Nowadays, authors can – and do – submit all the livelong day, just clicking SEND over and over again. So editors are drowning under a flood of submissions.

 And we are suffocating in their silence.

 WAAHHH!!! Oh, for an old-fashioned rejection slip coming in the mail today!

 But maybe I’ll get an email today that someone DOES want one of my books? I will perk up instantly and lamentation will become celebration. 

Until then, limbo continues… and may continue for the rest of my days….