Responses Are Required!

Last week I brought up a fascinating aspect of entry to the publishing world.  Several writers and authors have traversed this phase.  The publication phase.  No one likes rejection, but if you’re a writer, then you have known rejection from the kindest of words ever written to the short abrupt, and aloof form letter, to the editor of a literary magazine or publishing house who has the quirk of telling you how awful your work was and that it’ll never sell in a million years.  There are bestselling authors who can tell you that they were rejected hundreds of times.  One of my favorite paranormal romance authors stated that she was rejected 400 times before the first of her New York Times Bestselling series of approximately thirty books were accepted by a publisher.  Stephen King talked about his consistent rejection status until a publisher finally gave him a chance.  So, rejection is par for the course or at least it’s a part of this writing game we’re in.

Does it ever feel good?  Of course, not.  It’s not the rejection letters that got to me the most.  I expected them.  I actually started to get a little used to them over the years.  I began to look forward to seeing them in the post or my Inbox.

Why, you ask?

My thought pattern is at least a rejection letter, whether it said something nice like, “your work is excellent, it’s just not what we’re looking for at this time…,” or a form letter that was impersonal and flat.  Hell, I even looked forward to the more disappointing and negative letters.  We have all suffered terrible blows to our egos.  But, to me, nothing is worse than the dark well of silence.  It’s as if my submission was swallowed by the postal equivalent of a blackhole in the Universe.

I sit in limbo and wait.  I want to take a chair and park myself beside the mailboxes to make sure the mail man is doing his job.  He can’t possibly be delivering the right mail!  I feel like singing to him like the Marvelettes from the 60’s.  I want to ask him what he’s done with my rejection letter as if he knows what the heck I’m talking about.  I’m sure I’d get a nasty response from the postman.

To say the least, it is obvious a response is required from a literary magazine, editor, publisher, or agent.  Getting nothing is a definite no, I agree.  But if the gatekeepers were to receive utter silence in response to their queries, they probably wouldn’t offer it as an answer because, in truth, silence is not a reply, nothing is being conveyed; it is only implied.  The feelings of rejection are still there and are a great deal keener than if I received a form letter or a harshly worded letter that makes me want to gnash my teeth and shout Old English insults at them that they’ll never understand.

The writer/author on the other end, waiting for a letter to tell them yes or no has ethical standards.  We’re still holding the manuscript because the publisher, magazine, or agent does not accept simultaneous submissions.  That writer/author is trying to find a way to be acknowledged even if it’s an answer we’re not going to be fond of.  Having a piece of paper in our mailboxes or an entry in our Inboxes indicating that we are free to share our work with another publication or whatever the response may be is better than holding and waiting for weeks and months until it finally sinks in that this publication is not going to respond to us.  It causes another level of resentment to fester in the artist who is struggling to be a part of a community that consistently makes us feel as if we don’t’ belong in the first place.  Everything we do from writing to trying to get published is a catch twenty-two, and then, to have a publisher not respond at all is devastating, daunting, and demoralizing.  Writers keep trying because there is nothing left for us to do.  We can’t walk away from the craft we are called to contribute to no matter how much we wonder if we belong.

So, I say to you, writer/author.  You are not an imposter.  You are a writer.  If you have not reached author status yet, you will make it.  so many of our favorite authors had to go through what we are going through now.  The publishing world doesn’t’ have as many gatekeepers as it used to, and we have several options to publish and market our work.  If you’re in the traditional publishing game, don’t lose faith.  You can and will make it.  Just keep moving forward.  Write, learn, and above all else, keep creating!

CSA