So I woke up around noon today to find another rejection sitting in my inbox. Not the one I'm waiting on, though -- this one was for a poem that I'd kinda/sorta forgotten that I'd submitted. Which makes it worse. I wasn't expecting it, you see, so it's like this thing blindsides me from left field and says, "Hey, by the way, you suck!" Except it didn't actually say that. It didn't really say anything, being a standard rejection. (It did contain a personalized parenthetical -- or I assume it was, owing to the typo -- although this only said, "Trry us again, B. Thanks." Which is pretty much what the rejection said, minus the "this work was not selected" bit.) And this lack of commentary, I've found, also somehow makes rejections worse. Yesterday's rejection was for a piece that I still think is the best story I've ever written, and it was the second rejection I received in response to that story. It said nothing; standard reply. The first rejection, however, did have brief comments of a rather unflattering nature. But this was somehow comforting, since not only do I disagree with them entirely, but several persons to whom I've shown the story have had encouraging things to say. So then, at least, I could respond (i.e., to myself, not by way of nasty direct replies) by saying, "Philistine!" or something to that effect, and I didn't take this rejection very hard at all -- the rejection came on a Friday, and the story was in the mail en route to another editor on the following Monday. And even if I had agreed with them, or seen anything worthy of note in them, I could've sat down and revised the story in an attempt to make it better. But this telling me nothing...tells me nothing. And it's kind of hard to take. (more...)