I always think rejections mean I didn't do a good enough job of nurturing the story: e.g., as the creator (parent) of the story I sent it out too soon, before it was ready to stand on its own--never mind fly!--when it was still crawling or maybe slumping in it's infant seat, lolling its head.

now some stories will never grow up. they were born defective, alas, even perhaps repugnant to some, and though I as a parent will always love those stories unconditionally, well, they just can't make it in the world.

but most stories can, I think, at the right time. they may not get into the ivy league (the new yorker?) but certainly there are some local universities out there who will welcome them.

am I taking this conceit too far?

I sent that comment before proofreading.

I work in Media Relations, where my press releases and pitches get rejected all the time, too. (I live in a world of rejections.) And I've heard people say that there's always one perfect place for a story. It may not be the NY Times, but somewhere someone will think the story is worth writing about and you just have to find it. So I guess I think that about my fiction, too. When I get a rejection, I usually try to send something out that day to keep the cycle going....

I realized I had matured a lot as a writer when I continued to submit a story that was rejected eight times. I loved it and was gratified when it was accepted and even expressly and publicly loved on the ninth try.

I'll admit I still feel personally validated with acceptances and somewhat personally deflated with rejections. It's difficult not to: Writing is a very personal pursuit. But I find myself better at assessing my own work and more graciously accepting, appreciating and utilizing any feedback that accompanies rejections.

I enjoyed this post a lot! Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

That sense of "clicking" is important, and your point about "terse email" rejections is well-taken. That decision about what to make of a rejection—whether a story should be sent out again or revised—is very hard to make. How do you decide? Is it after a set number of rejections?

That subjectivity about a piece is definitely something I had to learn, and learned as you did, by being on the editorial side. I also think that, when determining a story's "worth" by evaluating the number of rejections it has gotten, one has to take into consideration the places it's being sent and their acceptance rates. A story could get rejected fifty, a hundred times if it's being sent to those journals with a 2%, 1%, or even lower acceptance rate.

I do so love those notes of encouragement.

Sometimes it's a matter of love. Others, the story isn't tight enough, too much fat. Still others, no character. Others, no plot. Sometimes we can't put our finger on why we do or do not love a story, but usually there's a hint we could give the author, however imperfect it may be.

It wouldn't take much longer to pick the stock reason to paste-in, I would think. Thoughts?

The reason I like the idea of form-checklists is that, coming from an editor, it gives a writer a better idea of what the editor's preferences might be and what pieces in the future may suit them. Saying "it doesn't suit our needs at this time," is unfortunately useless to a writer. But even something as simple as, "I liked it but it didn't quite make the cut" or "I'm not really digging the writing style of this" would mean so much more. There's a certain kind of metaphorical wall that the standard form builds between rejected writers and editors, and I'd like to think that would help break it down a bit without being an inconvenience.