Thank you for your submission to Metaphorward, the College University College of Arts and Letters' Literary Journal. We have reviewed your story, entitled I Poured my Heart and Soul in to This, but we are not able to accept it at this time. We wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.
I'm on a boat.
If this is your first rejection letter, it won't be your last. That's not an insult - the editors of Metaphorward only want to encourage new writers, even though we only publish about 6 of them per year. That means that, by volume, Metaphorward produces more rejection letters every year than we do copies of our journal.
Rejection letters can be hard to take, especially when you've worked really hard, and to that end the editors of Metaphorward would like to point out that publishing is kind of a crap shoot. Once you get a few publications under your belt, you'll have some momentum, and it gets easier to get your work out. Until that time, you will get a hefty stack of letters like this one.
While this is probably a crushing heartache for you, please remember that it's not personal, and in fact it's probably not even a reflection of your talent. We turn down lots of good pieces, but we have a very particular mode for the fiction we publish based mostly on whether or not we trust the interns doing our sorting, and also if we feel cranky because Starbucks was out of soy milk that day.
You may also think that we're sitting around having a laugh at your expense - this is not true. While occasionally make fun of the real stinkers we get, most of the submissions we receive are perfectly competent and well written, but maybe they run long, or use a font we don't like, or are about something other than graduate students resigned to a mediocre middle-class life that involves being bored by the people around them and taking the groceries out of a hatchback and deciding that it's basically okay, and that their dreams were kind of stupid anyway, and maybe having an affair.
Words to live by
Honestly, you'll almost never learn why you were rejected, (insert writer name here), and Metaphorward has no intention of telling you either. Try not to sit up all night staring out the wall listening to Great Gig in the Sky while drinking a fifth of cheap vodka. Don't over-think it. If it makes you feel better, you can pretend that they just didn't understand your genius or something like that.
Most writers keep their rejection letters up to a point, but be careful - looking at that big stack of terse little post cards attached to the first sheet of your best story can be cripplingly depressing. Some writers have gone so far as to wallpaper their writing rooms with rejection letters - this is fine if you have a particularly grim sense of humor, or if the letters inspire a sort of productive anger in you, but otherwise if you're going to keep them you should just put them in an old shoebox or two and file them away.
You're not the first, you won't be the last
If you take anything away from this rejection letter, (insert writer name here), just remember that it's all part of the writing process. If this was your one big story that you just have to have published then by all means keep sending it out, but be warned that others may not feel the same way about your work as you do. Indeed, sometimes the stories over which we are most passionate are those which are so rich with internalized meaning that though they are powerful and evocative to you, they mean very little to an outside reader. This can be very hard to take, but take it you must, or you will not persevere.
And in the end, so much of writing is perseverance. You must keep writing - one more word, one more page, one more chapter, until the thing is done - and then move on to the next. While criticism is helpful, you must remember that it is not you who is being criticized, but the story. Once you can make the distinction, rejection letters will be easier and easier to endure, and you will be well on your way.
All the best,
Editor-in-Chief
Metaphorward - the College University College of Arts and Letters' Literary Journal
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