Translating Editorspeak: A Writer’s Guide

As writers, what do we complain about most? Lack of time to write. Well, here's some help. I’ve noticed that when sorting out acceptance letters from rejections, that the first few words tell all. With this guide you don’t even have to read to the end of the first sentence anymore!

We love: You’re bad. Jam on it.

We are pleased: Yay!

We are interested: You are in, but only after a grueling revision.

We found. You might be in after a grueling revision.

We enjoyed. Your piece didn’t cut it, but please don’t shoot yourself.

Thanks for this. We’re concerned. Are you OK?

While. No.

I did receive a rejection from a lit mag recently that informed me that while they ultimately had to decline, they did “read until the end.” I could be irritated, but having read for a lit mag before, understand that this is actually, high praise.

Try Us Again (More on Lit Mag Rejection)

There is a sad thread in the Poets & Writers Speakeasy labeled “Encouraging" Rejections? I am naturally drawn to sadness so I like to read it. Maybe it's the quotation marks that get me. Or the question mark. One thing is for sure – sometimes it's hard to tell if a rejection is also encouragement to resubmit, or if the lit mag is Just Not That Into You.

For example, Crazyhorse:

We are sorry this particular manuscript (with emphasis on "this particular") was not selected for publication in Crazyhorse. We hope you will send us another soon, though.

Could they mean? Do they? But then…

We could not publish Crazyhorse without the fine writing we receive.

Meaning the editors didn’t notice anything especially fine about my writing in particular, they simply need “writing.”

C. Michael Curtis, long-standing fiction editor of The Atlantic Monthly, has a great essay How to Read Rejection. Among topics such as why-cutsey-cover-letters-brand-you-amateur, he discusses how editors must sacrifice kid gloves for the sake of clarity, because there’s deluded psychos out there. The Atlantic Monthly apparently had to stop typesetting their rejection letters in italics, because people read too much into it.

Curtis confirms that encouraging rejections are legit. Traditionally, these have manifested as a handwritten postscript. Now there’s this new trend, the encouraging rejection form letter. The Speakeasy Forum has determined AGNI sends these. Maybe this development has to do with the oft-discussed “MFA proliferation,” meaning there’s more work circulating that shows promise, but isn't quite seasoned. At Cutbank. we debated adding the "try us again" form letter to our repertoire. Having read for a lit mag I can vouch there is a huge difference between the "no way" and the "not bad" pile. Although it seems to me if you can’t be bothered to write a short note, then the work can’t have been that compelling.

Last week I received two encouraging rejections, one Xeroxed and one handwritten. My gut reaction to the form letter was that I would submit the same piece somewhere else, but not resubmit a different story to that lit mag. The handwritten, of course, will recieve another story stat.

On Lit Mag Rejection

We of the 3 P's have pledged to relate our post MFA travails in uncensored glory. In the interest of keeping this promise I will not wait until I’m published to post, but shall reveal the soft white underbelly of rejection.

The second fiction story I ever wrote I naively submitted to The Mid-American Review contest. A few months later, I got a note! (They are kind about that there). The note told me I made the top eight. Eight was underscored to emphasize this achievement. Not bad for a fledgling attempt. I was pretty excited and figured my submission life was on its way. Fire a story off. Send it out. With a few more tries, get published.

You see what's coming. You’re smart.

In the past year I have managed to make lit mag submissions/rejection a part of my routine. Every so often I sit down, pick a story or essay and shove a few copies in brown envelopes. This is the Post MFA life — generate new work, revise old work, send out work. Pray that someday editors and agents will enter the mix.

I fly to the mailbox everyday dreading (yet strangely hoping, why?) for an envelope with my handwriting on the front. Experience has taught me people email when they want you. I personally have never received an acceptance in the mail. Still I check that box like a mother waiting for news from her son at war. Even if he's dead I have to know.

Many of us Montana MFAs have racked up pubs in top lit mags this past year, which is encouraging. It’s nice to think we didn’t spend two years in a deluded la la land, playing artist, which sometimes (quite honestly) is exactly what the MFA feels like. An MFA acceptance is this happy/dizzy/hurrah! moment. You have been noticed as possessing Talent. But in the end, sharing cocktails with published writers you admire is not same as being one of those writers yourself. Graduation looms. The sinking pit of dread creeps. Nobody wants to be the girl who cried writer.

I still enter The Mid-American Review contest every year for sentimental reasons (plus it’s one of my favorite lit mags), but haven’t received a note since. Sniff. Someday TMR you will embrace me. Maybe I’m that girl you made out with once and years later she’s driving by your house, but often crumbs are exactly what we subsist upon.

A Good Year for MFA Graduates, Okay?

Yep—here we are again. Facing our demons. The bad year? or good year? existential self-questioning had bugged me like Fmr. Gov. Blago’s phone. (…) In honor of May, the time that the current class of MFAers say adieu to what they knew for two years, I offer a recollection of May '08--May '09 (give or take).

The good news. It is still a bit early for you, nearly-graduated one. May still gives you time to look forward to a belabored severance of your new, scared self from your old, confident self. I didn’t freak out or imagine the shape of the future beyond Missoula until August, once the UHaul had to be picked up or I’d forfeit my deposit. Or as I was selling my pre-owned mattress to a family whose toddlery son had to use my bathroom and proceeded to dump (throw?) my last roll of toilet paper in the bowl (true story).

Since August, I’ve learned key money-saving skills. They include how to create life-sustaining feasts in a bowl. It is much like I imagine astronaut food to be but poorly, poorly executed and non-dehydrated. Think rice and beans (dried, not instant), 5lb. beef “savings pack” and onions from the bin at Aldi. Put it all together…and you hope that a burrito wrap can hide the horror:


You know what? Just hold off on that Aldi onion and…grow your own onions! On your kitchen counter. Whoops. Get to know your favorite compost heap pile.


There will be copious reading opportunities for your genre of choice in your city of choice. Or, at least enough to sustain you and comfort you into a false sense that you-are-still-in-the-program. See some famous people. See some soon-to-be-famous people. Silently support them with beams of flowers and rainbows and unicorns and puppies and kittens because they need them and you can wait out karma.

Survive the winter and everything will be a-okay. It won’t seem like it in mid-January in Chicago (or Seattle--or, well, New Orleans is just warm anyway, without mercy, and we'll exclude it from our results), but trust.

You’re going to spend a fair amount of time researching post-graduation fellowships or residencies that will give you another year down the road to do that thing you were doing in the MFA program. You’ll spend the following March opening the rejection letters.

If you’re a poet, maybe you’ll find all the Apocalypse Now stuff mighty useful as an operating principle for your newly imagined collection of poems—you see it taking shape. Your perverse worldview had to pay off sometime. Since the real world is so damn bizarre sometimes, it’s almost too good to be true. It’s taking beautiful, exquisite shape. (Well, at the very least you’re totally estranged from your thesis, which you can’t even bear to look at, much less tinker with. This may change. In a bit, maybe you’ll warm up to it, face its cold icy stare. I’m waiting it out, giving mine the silent treatment for now.) But the scheming and the abject poverty of jet-loving corporations and the illness and the general turmoil treats you OK. It’s something you can always count on. Prose folks, I bet this is the same for you.

You will temp. Boy, will you ever temp. You will know the skills of the temp. Like a substitute teacher, be ready for the 5AM call. “Can you be on site, ah, 10 minutes ago?” Start…now. Watch as the clock on your assignment runs out. Four months, three months, two months… You’ll be searching the fall teaching openings. This is, of course, assuming you didn’t have an idea of what was going on and refused to acknowledge time would pass after you graduated. I found myself desperately clinging to the scam-toned Craigslist posts in the “education” section because, well, what did I have to lose?

And if this hasn’t enticed you, remember, not having the extra money to eat at "restaurants", see concerts, go to, what, the history museums, leaves a heck of a lot of time for sitting down and writing. Right? I’m not a perfect example, no. I spend a lot of time messing around and drafting elaborate and overly complicated, windbaggy emails to my online students. They don’t need to know how amazing Blackboard is. They can access their assignments just fine thank you very much. So, yes, for everyone who is driven, you can sit down and write and something actually materializes on the screen. But one thing is for sure: you won’t be sitting down to just write if you can’t pay your utility bill. Then you’re just in the dark.


And the job tip in the post directly below this one is excellent. Take it. Run with it.


The Three Ps roundup almost one year in:

• PhDs: One up and coming! Go Kelly!
• Publications: Yes, yes and yes.
• Panhandling: I applaud the social service opportunities available in large metropolitan areas for those in need.

P is for PhD!: An Update

If you know me, you know I accepted OU's PhD offer three weeks ago. Today I finally received word via email from FSU:

April 28, 2009

Dear Applicant,

I regret to inform you that the Department of English has not recommended your acceptance into our graduate program at Florida State University. Like many graduate programs around the country, we are limiting our enrollments in light of budget constraints and of prospects for placement of our students upon completion of their degrees. Competition for the available spaces in our program was especially keen this year, and we have been forced to deny many applicants with solid credentials. At this time we have already accepted our maximum number of students into the program.

We do wish you success in your future endeavors. Thank you for your interest in our program.

Sincerely,

Dr. Stan E. Gontarski
Director of Graduate Studies

Tara M. Stamm
Graduate Program Assistant
English Department

My understanding is that if I made it this far, then I was under serious consideration, which is nice, even if no cigar. Last year I was rejected in February. Word on the street FSU only had 2 spots this year instead of the usual “5 or 6.” That I made the inner circle is a huge compliment.

Yet, let us compare my email to the one sent Jackson Bliss, a fellow PhDer (who will be attending USC and with whom I *might* be cohosting a AWP panel on the creative writing PhD.)

And I quote from his live journal:

“Here's my gracious rejection email from Julianna Baggot at FSU, one of the final emails in a series of conversations we had:

Jackson,

It's a combination.

We usually overbook, meaning we usually accept more people than we actually expect to accept. We're trying to hit a target -- if we go over, well, we go over. But this year there was no margin to go over. At all. We could only accept as many as we had spots for. So it was tighter than usual. And then I was told one fewer and other wrenches. We had to wait. And wait. And now more folks -- from that tight offer batch -- have said yes than expected. So that's where we are.

The top seven-ten in both the PhD and MFA file in fiction, I felt like I would be honored to teach any of those students. Honored. The work was really stunning. Yours included. From there, it's a group decision. And it was painful for all of us. The work was really strong -- and varied. And the decision-making was so hard. You are hugely talented. You'll do great things. And I don't say any of this to make this easier.

All my best,

j."

I can’t help but feel a little jealous. Did I receive intimate fuzzy emails from Julianna Baggott? Engage in gracious correspondence? You know, emails employing words such as “stunning” and “honored,” signed with an adorably diminutive lower case “j”? Of course, I’m a good girl dumbass too terrified to contact an actual faculty member. I contacted the overwhelmed administrative assistant, who is undoubtedly three manila folders away from ovarian cancer. This email exchange isn't FSU's fault, but my fault, because I'm a contact-phobe.

Oh well, no is no, no matter how nicely worded. In the end, no is the final word that counts.