I will have been married for fifteen years this month, which means that (theoretically at least) all of my rejections are in my distant past. Unfortunately, however, I’ve been a writer for even longer than that, and so my experience with rejection is of a much more recent vintage. This is because, as every writer will tell you, if there is one thing that’s constant in writing, it’s rejection. (That’s one of the things I love so much about doing this column: it’s like getting an acceptance letter every week—and believe me, I appreciate it.)
In writing, there are three kinds of rejection: the impersonal “thanks, but no thanks,” the personalized “I liked it, but . . .,” and, my least favorite, a cross between the two, or rather, one that is actually one of the former tying to masquerade as one of the latter. A perfect example of this is when they say something like “I really liked the premise, but, unfortunately the narrative voice failed to live up to my expectations.” See, a letter like that sounds personal, but then you google the sender and find out they’ve sent the exact same letter to over two thousand authors all over the world. (Oh yeah: us writers? We talk.)
I don’t know: there’s just something vaguely insulting about the impersonal brush-off with a fake personal touch. I mean, it’s okay that you don’t like my manuscript—or even me—just don’t invent a reason that makes it sound like you were the one putting all of this effort into a relationship, which, due to my unfortunate shortcomings, was doomed from the start.
I’m sorry: do I sound bitter? I didn’t use to be; I used to be able to receive these impersonal personal rejections all of the time and never give them a second thought. (They were like the Safeway checkers who have to address you by name—annoying, yes, but in the grand scheme of things, really not that big of a deal.) But then, one day my insouciance evaporated. That’s because one day, it started happening in my own house. That’s right: I got the impersonal personal rejection from my very own daughter.
It was during the course of a teenage rant, when I was pointing out to her that I’d kind of appreciate it if she could spend more than just her sleeping hours at home, and she was pointing out that spending time in my presence was the equivalent of a vampire eating garlic bread. To illustrate her point she disdainfully added, “I just don’t want to spend my nights sitting on the couch and watching TV all night like you guys do.”
It was, I realized, the dreaded impersonal personal rejection.
How do I know? Well, for one thing, I don’t even know how to turn on the TV. (It’s true: we got a new one a couple of months ago and the damn thing is like something from “Star Trek.” You have to wave your hand in front of it just so to get it to turn on, and I have yet to figure out which particular hand position will activate it. And yeah, I tried that one. A lot. And no, it doesn’t work.)
It was as if she was reading from a script, a script that involved slightly moronic suburban parents spacing out in front of the TV and, I don’t know, scrapbooking or something, all while their hysterically precocious teenage daughter makes clever asides to the camera. At the end of the evening the charming daughter sighs at the sight of her goofy parents, asleep before ten o’clock once again, and—wait a minute. That part actually does happen.
Hmm. Maybe it was a personal rejection after all. Well, that’s a little better.