Guest blogger Derek Furr writes about hope, dessert and ambiguous rejection letters.
Let me begin with a familiar tale of rejection. I pulled into my driveway at the end of the day, entered the back door and greeted my family on my way to the mailbox. There I found a supermarket circular, a sad postcard asking “Have you seen me?”, The Nation and an envelope that I had addressed to myself. Now, if you’re a writer, you know that the self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) (a) is required by many literary journals when you submit your work, and (b) rarely brings good news, which these days tends to come by phone or email. Nonetheless, I opened the envelope hopefully, because as my youngest son used to say after most meals and every time we took a walk uptown, “You never know, there may be ice cream.”
Alas, you often know there won’t. The rejection slip was, up to a point, true to the genre: on card stock, polite, wishing me well in finding a home elsewhere for my story. But there was a note from the editor, hastily scribbled under the generic Dear John. “Well-written, came close, but we get too many from children.”
From children? I’m in my forties, a father of two. I was writing and teaching before some of the assistant editors on the board of the magazine in question could recognize the letters M-F-A. What could “from children” mean? The rejected short story was, in part, about a child, and the narrative moved in and out of his point of view. “That’s it,” I thought, “it’s shorthand for ‘about a kid from a kid’s perspective.’” I pitched the slip into the recycling bin.
An hour later I retrieved it and reread it. “What if ‘from children’ also refers to me?” I wondered. “Am I such a novice?” I read it again in brighter light. “Certainly, I’m not well-known,” I reasoned, “but I have a respectable publication record, not to mention passion, a work ethic, and an eye for a good story.” Indignant, I cast the slip back in the recycling, stared for moment, then lit upon the idea that ‘from children’ referred not to me but to the prose.
At this point, I suspect that I was mumbling. Does my prose seem immature? The story had been through so many revisions, workshopped, worked over, overworked even…if anything it was tired and callused. I went back to the recycling bin and snatched the slip up again.
For an entire day, this was to be a pattern: recycle, retrieve, re-read, as if I thought that a few hours under the purgatorial threat of reconstitution would persuade the offending slip to give up more information. Shaken and crinkled, it would produce a footnote to the mysterious from children. “The editor meant ‘about children,’ and neglected to mention that she is humbled by your heartfelt work of staggering genius.”
Fortunately, this tale of rejection has a happy ending. Another version of the story (it did need rejuvenating) was later published and is now part of my new book, Suite For Three Voices. I use the adverb “fortunately” advisedly. Because while I work hard at my craft and at getting my writing in front of readers, it’s often the Fates who seem to determine whether there will be ice cream. So as an accomplished writer once said to me, in addition to being disciplined, imaginative, and persistent, a writer must “be fortunate.” I’ll add “be hopeful,” not unlike a four-year-old angling for dessert.
Derek Furr is Associate Professor of Literature in the Master of Arts in Teaching Program at Bard College. He is the author, most recently, of a collection of short fiction, personal narratives, and essays, Suite For Three Voices (Fomite Press). Two pieces from the book, “Tabula Rasa” and “Feed My Sheep,” were first published in Potomac Review. An earlier version of “There May Be Ice Cream” was part of an essay in Field Notes, Fall 2005.