The past year, I have been diligently sending out my short stories to various journals.  This is a major psychological step for me.  My stories have always been just that, mine, and I have not wanted to share them with a larger audience.  A feeling, I’m sure, that is partially rooted in my own fear of rejection.  So far rejection is all my stories have found in the wider world.

This past week I received yet another letter saying “no thanks.”  This one came from Cezanne’s Carrot, a journal whose speciality is fiction that explores the metaphysical and mystical.  I sent them my story “Puppet Storm,” a story that fits nicely within their editorial guidelines.  This story is one that I started many years ago but finished only recently, and it narrates a comic moment of cosmic import.

The story has, so far, garnered no fewer than four rejections from journals large and small.

In the words of a poet friend of mine, “I want the rejections that are rightly due me.”  Nevertheless, I cannot help but feel a low, every time thsoe damned emails/letters arrive.

“We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but after careful consideration, we have decided not to publish it.”

Very succinct.

Whilst moping about this latest rejection, I read a great post on HTML Giant.  The author, Roxanne Gay, is an editor at Pank magazine, and in that role, she has the pleasure of sending more than her share of rejection notices.  Her post explores the stages of grief that every writer goes through when dealing with rejection:

1. It’s not me it’s those damned editors.
2. It’s all my fault.  I will never be published.
3. People just don’t understand the brilliance of my writing.

I have felt all these things.

Gay cautions folk like me not to fall victim to an entitlement mentality.  To put that energy back into the work.

She concludes:

Growing up, my father (like many fathers, I’m sure) was fond of reminding my brothers and I that life isn’t fair when we were pouting about one trivial thing or another. I often want to dispense that advice to writers who feel like publication is inevitable, that publication is  their right by the grace of their talent.  I’m afraid such is not the case.

‘Tis a good word.  Not very soothing to me at the moment.  Maybe it’s simply the reference to father figures, but Gay’s post strikes me as a bit trite right now, however, true I know her advice to be.

I have much work to do with my writing.  I want to write well.  I have yet to acheive what I want with writing.  I recently read an interview with Barry Hannah, in which he discussed a certain story of his (I forget which), it was a story that he wrote several years after publishing a book of stories.  Hannah was well on  his way to achieving some noteriety for his writing.  Yet he said of this particular story that it was the first time he felt like he got it right, like his words captured the essence of what he wanted.  I’m still waiitng for that moment, and I do not wait passively.  I write.  I read.

And I try to ignore the rejections.