Got another rejection this evening. This is the most encouraging rejection I’ve ever received. I love getting personal notes from editors because if they say anything – ANYTHING – no matter how neutral it is then it’s a good sign that at least they respected your work enough to comment. This last rejection, however, was almost an acceptance. Though there are no guarantees, I think it might be safe to say that I have a good chance of getting my work into this journal at some point in the future. The source is anonymous, for obvious reasons, but here’s the comment from the editors:

Dear Allen,

We’re passing on these, Allen. But not without praise. We very much enjoyed reading your work, will always welcome it here, whenever you take a notion to send it. The rejection has more to do with the huge number of quality submissions we’re receiving than anything else.

That last line is perhaps one of the most common reasons for rejection if a poem is on the mark. It tells me that I submitted the right poems to the right place. It also tells me that those poems are worthy of publication and that I should send them out to another journal immediately, which I will do.

I hope the journals that I receive rejection notices from don’t mind me publishing them. Technically, they own the copyrights to their rejections and I should ask for permission before publishing them. I don’t because I don’t really want to wait a week or two, or longer, to get a “yes”. By then, the spirit of the moment will have passed and it won’t be the same, so I make an assumption. Also, If I do get a “yes” I’d almost feel obligated to print the editor’s name or the name of the journal and I think that would be bad form and possibly open doors for future embarrassment. I wouldn’t want to do that to an editor and possibly burn a bridge, but I do believe that publishing rejection notices can be an encouragement to others and that’s why I like to do it. It says that near success is possible, and if near success is possible then full success is equally possible. It’s just another step up the ladder.

Rejection is something I don’t get enough of. That is because I don’t send out enough submissions. I tend to spend a lot of time writing and revising, honing the craft. The few submissions that I do send out tend to be after a lot of living with and sleeping with the words that I birth. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

At any rate, it’s been a hell of a day. We celebrated my youngest grandson’s birthday. It was a lot of fun, yet, somehow, I feel like shedding tears. Not because of the rejections. Just because.