An Electronic Spike

Who was the writer who saved all of his rejection letters on a spike on his desk? Not sure. I suspect it was Stephen King. Anyway, I've decided to post my spike for the year so far on the internet, seeing as all of my rejections came via email.

For the first time ever I've had more rejections than wins. I'm breaking down this rather devastating statistic into several factors: the law of averages (I've been sending more stuff off), the law of the tinny thing (like playing pool, pure arsey beginners' luck is sensational and always a lot of fun) and then there is when the said tinny thing is forced to come up with something better next time (I believe this situation is called 'a discipline', something I resist against my floundering ethical standards and better judgement.)

So here we go, here is the spike with an accompanying commentary ...

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for submitting your short fiction to Southerly.

We have received a large number of short fiction submissions recently, many of them of very high quality. Unfortunately there is no space in the coming year to publish your work, but we look forward to your future submissions.

We apologise for the delay in correspondence, and thank you for you patience. Please don’t hesitate to contact the journal if you have any further queries.

(That rejection took about eight months to hatch out and fly home to me. I'd quite forgotten I'd sent anything to them, which was fine because Overland had snapped up Whale, Daughter in the meantime.) 

But try this next one for an impersonal form rejection email that makes your shoulders slump at the computer.

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for submitting your story to Westerly. We regret that we are unable to use your work in the forthcoming edition. We look forward to receiving submissions from you in the future.

Best wishes – and thanks for your patience,

The Editors

Westerly Centre

(Bah.) 

The rejection emails I really liked came from the Griffith Review. I got a few but they always felt like a rebuff from fellow writers who gave a fuck:

Dear Sarah,
Thank you for submitting your short story 'The Venus of Breaksea Island' for consideration in the 3rd Annual Griffith REVIEW Summer Fiction Edition. Our editors enjoyed your piece; we feel it demonstrates considerable merit and skill in creating a vivid and harsh landscape and exploring loneliness and companionship in the face of isolation. Unfortunately, however, we were unable to fit your piece into the developing shape of the edition. While your piece did reach our second-round longlist, the overwhelming number of submissions we have received for the Fiction Edition has presented us with some difficult decisions to make; ultimately, this means that many high-quality pieces such as yours must regrettably be turned down. I wish you all the best in getting your work published elsewhere ...

This next one is to date the nicest rejection letter I've ever received. I told them that, to which they replied that they were seriously considering an eBook.

Dear Sarah,
Thank you again for submitting to our Novella competition.
Your submission, The Seal Wife, sailed through to the long-listing stage of the judging process, but I regret to have to inform you that it did not make the final cut.
More than 200 submissions were received and Griffith REVIEW was impressed by the amount of work and skill that went into all of them. The huge response indicates to us that there is a great deal of interest in the novella format and we hope to run a similar competition in the future. We would urge you to consider submitting if that happens.
In the meantime, ML, editor of the Review of Australian Fiction, has asked Griffith REVIEW to pass on to him those submissions that we considered to be especially strong.
With your permission, I would pass on your submission for his consideration.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Regards,
NB

Damn ... missed out on ten thousand bucks there.

I'm still waiting for a rejection from Overland regarding a story I sent them a month or so ago but Overland's print and internet outlets have both proved to be reliable and pretty egalitarian (and lucrative for me in the past) so if they don't publish me this time, it doesn't bother me too much. I like their style and anyway, that particular story about drinking rum out the back of Ravensthorpe may not have gelled with their progressive politics agenda.

I'm also still waiting for a rejection letter from Black Inc's Best Australian Essays. I'd like one from them this week purely for the sake of good manners, seeing as they have just put up their list of contributors for this year's book and I'm not on it.

It's not all bad. After all, this year I got signed for a ripper book deal which is a nice raised middle finger to the world and the US mag Creative Nonfiction have printed my story about plucking Aunty Jack out of Oyster Harbour in the early hours of a morning when we should have been plucking out crab pots. Coming out this month.

The funny thing is the 'no thanks' emails get easier to handle the more other publishers say 'yes please' because I am beginning to understand what the whole scene is about. 
But writing stuff down and sending it into the ether or a publisher's letterbox to be scrutinised is, was and always will be a case of giving someone an axe and baring your throat upon the chopping block. Writing, acting, painting or sculpting still takes a greatheart, a day job and plenty of spinach.