Rejection
It is sitting to the left my computer, buried under a pile of mail and pulsing as though radioactive. It's a letter. A rejection letter, in fact, signed by someone who manages a small corner of a big publishing house. My manuscript had been sitting around his office for months. I finally gave him a nudge, he gave me a letter, and now....
Was it really 35 years ago that I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant somewhere in San Francisco's Sunset District, dining with fellow grad students and our revered professor? It was a good place for me to be in those days, the San Francisco State University creative writing program. Although I could not admit it at that point, my life's real work involved handling a disability, adjusting to a new life. And San Francisco State represented an incremental step toward the real world. A commuter campus with very little there except the bare bones of academia.
Which meant that after class meant off campus. Which was why a group of creative writing students was gathering miles away from the classroom. An event that was no big deal for them, but involved driving my 1968 Plymouth Valiant to another part of town, finding the restaurant, finding a parking space and, the most difficult, making my restaurant entrance on crutch. I recall nothing of the evening except one general observation of our professor, Leo: writing is all about rejection.
And 35 years later, this particular rejection comes with a highly detailed "no." There is a no to the style and an additional no to the central character, me, the latter being wholly unsympathetic. I read the publisher's rejection note quickly, late at night, taking the contents in like the concentrated bran muffin I often have at breakfast. The latter has the approximate texture of molded sawdust and, while effective, it does induce a mild gag reaction going down. Never mind. It has to be taken in. It's good for us.
One of the many unpleasantnesses of my writing style, this letter explains, is my tendency to be opaque. Okay. So, I will have a serious go at this one.
In writing the book in question, I did have the sense of blanking out some of my emotional responses. All this in the name of objectivity, a quality hard to achieve in writing about very personal matters. More to the point, the tone may reflect my own struggle with caring for myself, being sympathetic to me, loving myself. All of which may add up to opacity. Hard to say.
As for hard to like, with reference to the speaker-writer-self, well this might amount to the same thing. Just criticism? Entirely possible. Or this might be like Shostakovich versus the Soviet music critics. The composer famously said his negative reviews were just. Just too much, it seemed to everyone else. I don't know. All this has to sink in, get filtered and get me going. The last part being the most important. I'm determined to get on with it. Not get down. And even get help.
Which is why I rang a friend this morning and requested assistance with my socks. Lorna is now tied up with someone who is dying. Fortunately, my need is lesser. Still, there are the socks. I am glad that when the bad news arrived, I did not isolate myself too much. The morning putting on of socks lightens my workload and my mood. It makes it possible to even lift the junk mail from the publisher's letter and read the thing one more time.
On second reading, things get a bit worse and a bit better. It turns out that my style is also heavy-handed. Oy. What's better is the publisher's suggestion that I find an editor who can help me make a success of the project. Interestingly, I missed all this on the first reading. The fact that someone wishes me well. No cold impersonality. Someone who doesn't know me hopes for my success. Mixed in with the observation that the manuscript seems to be entirely about sadness, anger, frustration and despair. Again oy.
Actually, to put things in context, the publisher has made it clear that he hasn't read the piece. He is quoting from an editor's report, passing this on to me...and saying good luck elsewhere. My impression from last night's first reading of this letter was that some disdainful and unfeeling person, superior and contemptuous, had flicked off a comment or two, and I might as well get stuffed. Which says a lot about me, my childhood with two preoccupied and emotionally infantile parents...and very little about the real world.
What next? The truth is I don't really feel like revising this manuscript. Maybe later, but not now. I don't feel like revising anything, except my worldview. I want to start something new. Then I'll deal with something old.
Was it really 35 years ago that I was sitting in a Chinese restaurant somewhere in San Francisco's Sunset District, dining with fellow grad students and our revered professor? It was a good place for me to be in those days, the San Francisco State University creative writing program. Although I could not admit it at that point, my life's real work involved handling a disability, adjusting to a new life. And San Francisco State represented an incremental step toward the real world. A commuter campus with very little there except the bare bones of academia.
Which meant that after class meant off campus. Which was why a group of creative writing students was gathering miles away from the classroom. An event that was no big deal for them, but involved driving my 1968 Plymouth Valiant to another part of town, finding the restaurant, finding a parking space and, the most difficult, making my restaurant entrance on crutch. I recall nothing of the evening except one general observation of our professor, Leo: writing is all about rejection.
And 35 years later, this particular rejection comes with a highly detailed "no." There is a no to the style and an additional no to the central character, me, the latter being wholly unsympathetic. I read the publisher's rejection note quickly, late at night, taking the contents in like the concentrated bran muffin I often have at breakfast. The latter has the approximate texture of molded sawdust and, while effective, it does induce a mild gag reaction going down. Never mind. It has to be taken in. It's good for us.
One of the many unpleasantnesses of my writing style, this letter explains, is my tendency to be opaque. Okay. So, I will have a serious go at this one.
In writing the book in question, I did have the sense of blanking out some of my emotional responses. All this in the name of objectivity, a quality hard to achieve in writing about very personal matters. More to the point, the tone may reflect my own struggle with caring for myself, being sympathetic to me, loving myself. All of which may add up to opacity. Hard to say.
As for hard to like, with reference to the speaker-writer-self, well this might amount to the same thing. Just criticism? Entirely possible. Or this might be like Shostakovich versus the Soviet music critics. The composer famously said his negative reviews were just. Just too much, it seemed to everyone else. I don't know. All this has to sink in, get filtered and get me going. The last part being the most important. I'm determined to get on with it. Not get down. And even get help.
Which is why I rang a friend this morning and requested assistance with my socks. Lorna is now tied up with someone who is dying. Fortunately, my need is lesser. Still, there are the socks. I am glad that when the bad news arrived, I did not isolate myself too much. The morning putting on of socks lightens my workload and my mood. It makes it possible to even lift the junk mail from the publisher's letter and read the thing one more time.
On second reading, things get a bit worse and a bit better. It turns out that my style is also heavy-handed. Oy. What's better is the publisher's suggestion that I find an editor who can help me make a success of the project. Interestingly, I missed all this on the first reading. The fact that someone wishes me well. No cold impersonality. Someone who doesn't know me hopes for my success. Mixed in with the observation that the manuscript seems to be entirely about sadness, anger, frustration and despair. Again oy.
Actually, to put things in context, the publisher has made it clear that he hasn't read the piece. He is quoting from an editor's report, passing this on to me...and saying good luck elsewhere. My impression from last night's first reading of this letter was that some disdainful and unfeeling person, superior and contemptuous, had flicked off a comment or two, and I might as well get stuffed. Which says a lot about me, my childhood with two preoccupied and emotionally infantile parents...and very little about the real world.
What next? The truth is I don't really feel like revising this manuscript. Maybe later, but not now. I don't feel like revising anything, except my worldview. I want to start something new. Then I'll deal with something old.
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