Well, today was like the day of rejections, a conspiracy of NO's.
i got rejections from:
the AWP journal finalists. william rejected BOTH of my manuscripts, "The Great Fall" (fiction) and "Masquerade" (non-fiction), and then i got home and there were three more rejection letters from:
subtropics
tin house
alaska quarterly (though this was a good rejection: hope you'll try us again, it read).
let's recount. 5 rejections in one day. man, that's efficient, even for the publishing world.
needless to say, i'm fine with this. i mean, i don't like being rejected, no one likes being rejected, but it's william's call and i'm not personally offended or pissed off about this. he picked the manuscripts that he thought were publishable, and he never seems to think my writing fits that category. that's his opinion, and i don't agree with it, but i respect it. also, i guess what's taking off some of the edge is, i opened up one of his recommendation's he wrote for me--totally wrong and unethical of me, i know, but i did it anyway--for a fellowship i'm no longer applying for, and the letter was short but actually really flattering. i was kinda shocked. he wrote that i was one of the most gifted writers in the program in the 30 years he's been working at notre dame. somehow, knowing he feels that way about me even if he's REJECTED MY AWP STORY SUBMISSIONS TWO YEARS IN A ROW, makes things feel less shitty. of course i wonder, what does he admire if he can't find anything of mine that he thinks is publishable, is it just crude creative raw material? i guess i'll never understand that.
i'm happy for cyu and bee, though. i feel like this is a great for them. they're good writers and i'm happy that they're getting institutional endorsement, that's what they deserve. i wish them well.
my response to all of this concentrated rejection is to:
go shopping with k
laugh hysterically, and maybe watch a sappy romance flick later this week and get a good cry out of it
write this entry
eat well--that always does the trick
blitzkrieg submissions. . .
some of my fiction was recently accepted at:
SoMa literary journal, a geocentric, sanfran journal that's pretty cool, so i'm pretty stoked about that. details forthcoming.
and, today was my last fiction workshop of my MFA career! Holl!