“There’s a fallacy that some of my friends sometimes fall into, the ol’ ‘The audience is stupid. The audience only wants to go this deep. Poor us, we’re marginalized because of TV, the great hypnotic blah, blah.’ You can sit around and have these pity parties for yourself. Of course this is bullshit. If an art form is marginalized it’s because it’s not speaking to people. One possible reason is that the people it’s speaking to have become too stupid to appreciate it. That seems a little easy to me.”

I received a rejection letter two weeks ago for some poems I’d been pretty self-satisfied about when I submitted them to a lit journal. I was a little surprised that the journal hadn’t wanted them, but what surprised me more was the brief stab of indignation. “Those fools! What do they know?” The brief imp-tap of that special arrogance of those who believe they’ve been slighted. Then I reread the poems, since cigarettes weren’t handy, and it took me only about a minute to be embarrassed of my reaction. Of course they didn’t want them. Their prosody was all over the place, only one or two of them were actually somewhat strong, and anyway none of them were anything like what the pub had desired for their late-winter issue. Amazing what a change of perspective a couple months brings to your own work.

It seems old-hat to cite On Writing by Stephen King, since everyone does, but he did something interesting with his rejection letters, when they began pouring in: he posted them on the wall of his workspace to remind himself of the importance of always improving, and to keep himself humble in the event of any success.

Anyway, good luck with your query revision, and the next step, whatever it entails. I originally started reading your articles in January because I was checking out web mentions of Creative Byline, where I work. If you’re doing more research on publishers, or have questions about us specifically, I’m glad to help out in any way I can.

Best,
Peter