Rejected We Stand!

It turns out I wasn't the the only person pondering the already well-trod subject of rejection. In fact, there was quite the to-do in the Land of The Blogs when The Virginia Quarterly Review decided to make public some of the comments that the journal's readers have made while slogging through the slush pile. And they were, um, pretty mean. This set off a firestorm of such magnitude that VQR redacted the offensive comments and posted a mea culpa here.

I think the horrified reactions were a little much. But that's probably because I begin the submission process with the knowledge that my writing will likely be mocked by the anonymous reader at Journal X or Journal Y or Journal Z. That's a risk we sign up for, is it not? For me, it's not much different from wearing shoes with feathers on the heels and knowing full well that someone is going to think they're ridiculous. And it's okay! Because secretly, I know they're suprawondralistic. Just like secretly, I know that whatever story I send out is...really not that bad.

In other rejection-oriented linkage: Grace Talusan and Literary Rejections On Display.

And now...Nesting Ground bonus points for the reader who can identify whose shoes are in this previously posted 2-year-old photo, and on which occasion they were worn: