i had meant to blog about this months ago -- it's just as well i didn't, since the status of the project seems to be in flux.
i had decided, when we bought the house, that i would paper the downstairs powder room with short story rejection slips.
ben, who almost never says no to anything (because he is the SINGLE most subversive person i have ever met in my LIFE), thought it was a great idea. we weren't even moved in yet, and i went at the room with the mod podge, a brush, and a few saved rejections that i particularly liked.
i had decided to use only my "best" rejections -- the very personal rejections, both positive and negative. i had saved only a few, though, all with handwriting on them. some were from magazines i never published in, some i eventually did (or had beforehand).
and, rather slapdash, and with the unbridled excitement of being a homeowner -- and thereby being able to glue any shit i wanted to glue, right to the walls, i went at it.
a few things slowed the project down. first of all -- i just don't submit the way i used to. i used to submit PILES, shooting blind, like my life depended on it. there was a time i must have been getting ten manuscripts a week rejected -- and a nice, wall-covering slip inside with each of them, maybe even handwritten. but i didn't save very many when that was happening.
i submit a lot less now -- and, frankly, have a higher rate of acceptance when i do submit -- and, and a lot of this now happens electronically, and is only going to continue in that direction. there just aren't as many rejection slips on the planet as there once were, thanks to the internet.
the whole joke behind wallpapering a bathroom with my rejection slips was supposed to be that it was easy. but i don't have any to add to what i started.
an additional problem has arisen. while most of our house was deemed "a fortress" by our home inspectors at time of purchase, the first floor powder room never was. it was an add-on, built by the previous owners, and, as we soon found, it leaked.
we have plans to redo the powder room, now that the roof has recently been replaced. and i do not think my plans include these rejection slips anymore.
i hear my dad screaming. i see him holding his big round charlie brown-head in his hands. no! no throwing away documents! my dad also plays "show and tell" at his house by pulling random envelopes out of random boxes and coming out with things like my grandmother's report card from when she was six years old. dad, that is why we have your house. i am not sure these can be saved.
we're gonna give it a try, with an x-acto, when we take off the wallpaper. i was too charmed by the idea of slapping stuff over the wallpaper when we moved in, to realize it might not be the prudent way to go. i can live with the loss. honestly.
i wonder, if the rejections had continued to spread across the walls -- let's just say there was a paper one for every story i submit to a magazine or journal, from now until doomsday -- how many different magazines and journals would be represented? how many repeats of the same magazines and journals? why do writers of short stories send to the journals they send to? why do they send repeatedly to certain ones? why are they always willing to try out new ones, often sight unseen?
i have wondered this both as a writer and as an editor. here is my answer: because writers are looking for a love match. it's more than just the contributors' copies, the "credit", or anything that tangible. i have come to believe that writers are always hungry for new places to submit because writers want to connect with editors who will make their stories better. an editor who makes your story better is one who understands your story; an editor who understands your story is halfway to being, even if only for a limited engagement, an intimate. i think that is the dream-connection that writers submitting in the periodical market are often trying to make, whether they realize it consciously or not. it's not the acceptance of the story. it's the editing of the story. it's not the person who buys it and reads it who we wish was the target of cupid's arrows -- but the editors.
i have had my stories edited by people whose legs i wanted to cling to for the next six months. i've also had them edited by people who i knew were just sitting around thinking, "well, my job is to change something about this, so let's change it." that's painful. that's what makes me never want to submit to a particular magazine or journal again -- an editing experience where there is no connection. writers want a love connection.
isn't it appropriate then that a bathroom should be papered in literary rejections, just like the stalls in the bathroom at a club or bar are marked up with phone numbers and documentation of couplings -- more failed than not?
i like the short story market because i like lingering in the proving grounds. that sort of makes me a barfly slut, if you want to follow my analogy all the way through.
paper: a textile.