The Bad Idea that I Never Gave Up On
And how this writer deals with near-constant rejection
The life of a writer is near-constant rejection. Jack London’s Martin Eden — a novel about “writers’ frustration with publishers” — was great for me to read when I was a young writer. (Actually, I still feel like I’m a young writer even though my resume says “senior writer.”)
The life of a playwright is even harder, where rejection is constant —if you ever expect to get a piece produced beyond your local community theatre — because the avenues to the “big leagues” or just a “bigger league” are so limited.
All this is to say, I’m very, very used to rejections. I expect a thumbs down every time I pitch or submit work to any outlet. And it’s always annoying when the publisher, theatre, production company, agent, or whatever, doesn’t take the 30-F-ing seconds to write a simple sentence to say “why” they're rejecting your work.
So readers, agents, editors, literary managers, and artistic directors, please know there’s a good way to reject a piece, and it’s not the chicken-sh!t standalone form letter. Okay, I understand a form letter may be a necessity in the interest of time, BUT there’s no reason you can’t add one simple sentence to each form letter to shed just a little light on your decision not move forward with the…
