Dear literary magazines who rejected my work this morning:

Don’t you know who you’re dealing with here?  My first essay ever, in Nonfiction 1 four years ago, came back with an A+ and a stickie note on it that said, “You are a gifted writer.”  (see photo left)  My senior seminar teacher told me that my writing was reminiscent of Hemingway and that I was in the top 2% of all the writing students he has taught over the last 29 years.  Don’t you know who I am?

Well, that’s okay because I don’t either.  I can't submit my best writing to you because it is a highly autobiographical piece about my father and other easily identifiable characters, and it contains liberal creative embellishments (i.e. fibs), and despite the fact it is entitled My Notebook Stories: My Father, My Joy, which sounds like a tribute and a compliment, my father would take it as nothing less than a reprehensible invasion of privacy that's not even accurate, and he would probably never speak to me again.  So you received my second best work, not my first best, and you rewarded it, I suppose justly, with your stupid rejection emails―some nice, some not so nice―and it's starting to bug me.

To further illustrate my identity confusion, when I applied to grad school, I submitted a 25-page writing sample that included two pieces.  I chose the first piece, Dark Edges, to develop for my thesis, and the Admissions director, who is also my adviser, preferred My Notebook Stories: My Father, My Joy.  “Brilliantly constructed,” she said over the phone, “So intricate and revealing, yet sensitive.”  Oh, brother, wouldn’t you know?  “Don't forget about Dark Edges,” I think.  “Please take another look.”

Anyway, back to the reject guys.  You aren’t even the best magazines that have rejected me.  You are the also-rans, the second bests, like my submissions.  I have been rejected by the fine likes of Brevity and Dislocate and Collision and I’m sure a dozen other premier sites whose names I’ve thankfully forgotten by now.  Selective memory keeps my pride in place, and God only knows where I'd be without my pride.

As I sit here, I am aware of the critic on my shoulder, who, as I ramble on purposelessly, is telling me that if this ragtag writing is my blog for today, I am a very unfocused, very shallow person.  I should be writing about sultry, dark sex with a secret, forbidden partner who worships me, or a poignant moment, where I wanted to throw myself off a bridge, but couldn’t because the sun was setting to make room for the full moon as it glowed brighter and brighter in the deepening twilight sky.  Or the heartache of some unrequited love (and there are so many), or an earth-shattering self revelation that stopped me dead in my tracks, or a triumph over an unimaginable hardship that would submerge a less hearty soul.  Life-changing, pivotal, weighty moments.  Ah, hell.  Sometimes I’m there, sometimes not.

Okay, that’s my deep for today.  Shallow is as shallow does.  Rambling is as rambling does.  And I’m content to sit here typing and be okay with coming up with nothing mind-boggling―no conclusions, no startling revelations―which is okay for now because all is well in my world, despite the two rejection letters I received this morning.  Or was it three?  I can't remember.  “Good,” I say, forcing my fists to unclench and my lips to smile.  “I have two more pieces to circulate into other markets.”  Onward and ahoy! (or whatever)

The end.

From Louise