Well, don’t I feel special. Two rejections for my submitted something or other on the same day. Those pieces sucked anyway and I submitted them during the wrong phase of the moon and my energies were all wrong and I wasn’t being open to all the universe had to show me yet, of course. Life lessons or something to be learned here. Or that my writing sucks and nobody wants a thing to do with it. I’m a crappy writer who has delusions of grandeur. I should have gone into shoveling dead animals off the highway, at least I’d have enough cash to buy Christmas presents once in a while and some actual self-respect rattling around in whatever’s left of my soul. Which is poisonous thinking and I should pour some sugared sunshine posit-tronic thoughtjuice on that and smile through the pain and fake it until I make it. Wheeeee.
Yeah. Something like that.
I know we’re not supposed to admit a feeling of utter GODDAMN IT GODDAMN IT FUCK. That’s so…defeatist. No sense, none, not a single dropsicle of sense, needs to be wasted on getting upset, angry or in any way emotional over yet another rejection and another right after that and another, and yet another, oh look, another rejection form letter urging me to keep submitting; even though they enjoyed reading my work it was not suitable at this time for our needs. Maybe next time. Maybe next time. The two following little blurts are from actual rejections sent to moi. I have made them generic and every day to protect the guilty and the sadsacks alike.
Thanks again for sharing this. As always, there was a wide range of excellent responses to this image, but we received 262 poems in total, and the artist and I could each only pick one. Unfortunately we chose other work—check the [I’ll leave the name to your imaginations] this Tuesday and Thursday to read the two winners. [Subtext– come and read what a good poet wrote. Why don’t you try being a good poet so maybe your life will have meaning at last? That’s so not the subtext, brainworm. I should support other writers, so they’ll support me when I’m in the winner’s circle. And when will you get near that winner’s circle, o Ms. Crappola O’Crappy? ]
Thank you again for submitting your play, [ what does it matter? It lost. It doesn’t deserve a title.] We are finally gearing up for this year’s production of [when did I submit a play for this place? Oh yeah, back in September 2016], and while we enjoyed reading your play, we are unable to include it in the lineup.
UPDATE, as of May 5, 2017– just got one of my fave kinds of rejections. Where they tell you you did not win and then wax rhapsodic over the play that did win. Like, a giant bitchslap of just how much you sucked and that other play ROCKED THEIR UNIVERSE AND IS THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD, THE WHEEL AND THE INVENTION OF CATS. “We just thought you’d like to know you didn’t get selected.” End it there. I don’t need a revival-tent-ish testimonial to whatever did win. Fragile ego here, god damn it!!
Now, I do have a sense of humor about rejections, I do. I laugh– ha ha-– and then try to remember that rejection is a part of life and it’s all about learning something and that when you get lemons, drink vodka and that when a door closes, you still have cheesecake. Except when the cheesecake is at the store so you spread peanut butter on stale crackers instead, which makes you feel like a total loser because a real winner, even when they didn’t get picked from a random herd of sweaty, earnest other writers, would have fucking cheesecake in their fucking house. Amen.
There’s not even those fake Dollar Store cheesy puffy things in the house that try to be Cheetos but fail so miserably it’s laughable. Ha ha. Maybe the universe can send me one of those “You’ve won five dollars” scratch-off lottery tickets [One I don’t actually have to buy. One I find out in the yard beneath the oak tree. I’m totally down for some miracles right now. Magically appearing, modest-winning scratch-off lottery ticket, I’m in!] before deluging me with rejection letters. I think that’s fair. Totally, like, fair and stuff. There’s no balance here, universe. None! It’s a lopsided smackfest! At least send some fake ass cardboard-esque Cheeto wannabe products my way if you’re gonna keep sending me multiple rejection notices every other day. Hello!!! HELLO!! Is this thing on??
Oh, P-freaking-S– I was gonna, like, take a break from this here bloggie for a bit due to needing some mental health days [like, um, you couldn’t tell or something that my mental health, like Elvis, has left the building], having life flu, and generally, planning a dance like nobody’s watching dance party marathon for one, but…yeah. I decided to vent like a pouty little volcano and spew feeble almost-ash into the indifferent air. whee
Oh– Goddamn it, France. Remember when Germany occupied you, ahem, during that thing we labeled WWII? Why are you trying to put an actual far-right fucknut on your French throne there? [I know it’s not a throne, I was being cutesy.] So the actual right-now Germany can make movies about the noveau [neu– I hope that’s a somewhat correct German word for new. Again, I was trying to be cutesy.] French Resistance? Yeah, immigrants, Satan sent them. So maybe build a wall around France and then Satan can’t get in…oh wait, that’s America’s Bigly Planz. Um…let me get back to ya, France. BRB.
How bad does it have to get before people…Fuck. Really bad. It has to get kill a bunch of people, mass graves, atrocities and breaking news reports read by serious-faced perfect-haired automatons bad and even then, it has to get more and more foul until we all magically remember we’re all better than that and this cannot stand and how can people do that to each other…I forget that we all forget and have to repeat everything a bazillion times to get anything through our goddamn thick heads. And then repeat it all again after that because nothing sticks in our goddamn collective thick heads. Never forget? We never remembered in the first goddamn fucking motherfucking goddamn place. Amen. I ended with this French stuff to remind myself that rejections suck but fascism sucks more. It’s all about perspective, fellow babies. Now I want cheesecake and Cheetos. Hello, power of suggestion.
ANN WUEHLER 
It’s frustrating and hurtful to get rejections. I’ve only had three for my novel so far, and I’m anticipating quite a few more in the long run. I ended up self-publishing my first two, although that didn’t exactly lead to financial success. Either way, it doesn’t help the feeling that you’re not as good as someone else. I guess all you can do is try to be proud of what you have created, because at the end of the day no one else could have—regardless of anyone else’s opinion.
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I had three rejections yesterday, so that was fun and nice and wonderful. [An email sent late at night, about a ‘sure thing’ that has soured me on friends asking me to ‘send them some stuff’. But you can’t burn bridges! Oh no no. I’m not bitter. Nope! Yes, yes, I am.] Most of the time I do try to shrug it off as ‘part of the game’ of being a writer or an artist or someone who creates X. The ‘arts’ have something like a 97% rejection rate, [a figure wafted to me from grad school classes] and it’s all just part of ‘being a writer’. But other times, I just explode like a whiny volcano–see above– and then go back to mouthing positive slogans to myself about ‘hanging in there’ and ‘it’s all worth it’ and ‘maybe next time they’ll pick me because they liked how I’m also from Oregon’. I need to remember I have had some some modest successes this year and blah dee blah. Thank you for commenting on this self-indulgent rant of mine. And good luck, break a leg? on your publishing endeavors. It’s rough out there. I need to replace my ‘you can do it’ inner monologue loops this morn with ‘you can do it, hang in there, ah, have a cookie’ loops.
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