nonfiction

Writers aren’t like other people…

Writers aren’t like other people.

They have less money. Considerably less.

They drink more. Considerably more.

Palely haunting basements/attics as they do, they could easily be mistaken for ghosts. But writers are themselves haunted by one particular phantom. Its name is Rejection.

In my writing lifetime, I’ve received enough rejection letters, easily, to fashion the paper-boat twin of the RMS Titanic. I picture it filled to the brim with editors, floating noisily into icy northern waters.

I once received eleven rejection slips in a single day. What happened the rest of the day is, with a little help from gin, a mystery.

And I remember — how could I forget — the very first time my work was rejected. That first cosmic shin-kicking.

I was a longhaired eighteen-year-old, teeming with optimism.

The hair is gone, now, along with the optimism. But my recollection is as sharp as ever…

Like most unimpressive youths with no notion of how or what to write, my first composition was a poem.

My own life, I figured, was too dull to write about (it was), and so for source material I browsed bookstores (they still had bookstores in those days) and libraries (there were still a few libraries) and even newspapers (there were two of them).

Chancing, at last, on an inspiring idea, I closed myself off from the world and labored for days on a poem that was, in my humble estimation, the best ever written.

It was a ballad. A lengthy one. About an ornery sea captain.

Hoarding brilliance is criminal — sea-captain ballads belong to us all — so I stuffed the poem into an envelope addressed to The Biggest New York City Magazine, dropped it in a mailbox, and waited.

And waited…

While I waited, I daydreamed. Mostly about the Literary World, which I envisioned as a green lawn strewn with tapas tables and who’s whos.

SCENE: A garden party. Assembled LITERATI yammer over crab puffs. Enter the AUTHOR, a gallant youth wearing a bowtie and gripping an orné cane. A hush comes over the crowd. A MONACLED MAN approaches the AUTHOR.

MONACLED MAN [Timidly.] I beg your pardon. But aren’t you the celebrated author of “The Ornery Sea-Captain?”

The AUTHOR swallows a crab puff, adjusts his bowtie, and gives his cane a flourishing twirl.

AUTHOR: [Dryly.] Yes.

The LITERATI pour forth in a din of crinoline-swish and cane-clatter, a thousand jewelled hands reaching out for the AUTHOR’S, which are full of crab puffs.

It was a glorious vision.

As the weeks of waiting became months, I revisited that fantasy again and again. Sometimes I’d be wearing a top hat, and sometimes a beret, but otherwise it played out identically. Until, one morning…

Rummaging through the day’s hamburger adverts, I discovered a letter from The Biggest New York City Magazine.

I secreted the envelope back to my suite. As the LITERATI peered over my shoulder, I tore it open. And stood there, perplexed.

The envelope contained my original poem and — not a check, but a scrap of paper with a few lines printed on it. I remember the lines verbatim not because they stung (and they did sting) but because, in the ensuing years, I’ve received identically worded notes a million additional times, at least.

Dear Author:

We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material.

Yours,

The Editors

That was it.

The MONACLED MAN lifted his chin and laughed derisively. As he and his associates polished off the crab puffs, the green lawns receded into the dusty floor of my unswept apartment.

I crumpled up the rejection slip, disheartened. Then it occurred to me — administrative glitches are inevitable — that it may have been sent in error. With renewed enthusiasm, I launched the Captain back to New York City.

The Captain sailed straight home, in record time.

At best semi-fazed, I tried my luck with The Second-Biggest New York City Magazine.

Then The Third-Biggest.

The Fourth.

And every time, the Captain faithfully returned, puffing on his corn pipe, shrugging. It was devastating.

I was — devastated.

I contemplated scaling a lighthouse and flinging myself into the sea.

I lived in the middle of the Canadian prairies.

But there are other ways of drowning oneself. As every writer knows.

I reached for the gin bottle…

It took me years to have a trio of critical epiphanies.

The first: “The Ornery Sea-Captain” was an atrocious poem. In fact, everything I wrote in those days was atrocious. Writing something worth reading takes years of rehearsal. I’m still working on it, actually.

The second: There really is a garden. A beautiful one, full of actual LITERATI and actual AUTHORS eating crab puffs, drinking wine and laughing uproariously. What I hadn’t noticed, though, in my youthful fantasizing, were the high walls surrounding the garden, and its oppressive iron door. Submitting one’s work — whether to a magazine or a publishing house — is like approaching that door and taking a random stab at the password. You might get it, eventually. If you’re extraordinarily lucky. And you might die trying, too.

The third realization: if you purchase the really big bottles, you can save hundreds of dollars a year on gin.

I’ve still never been published in The Biggest New York City Magazine. Or The Second-Biggest. Or The Third. Though I still submit to them. And they still send me Dear Author letters. With distressing regularity.

Though rejection still haunts me, I’ve grown accustomed, at last, to its rasping chains and fetid odors. Like sickness and in-laws, its visits are too numerous and always unwelcome. Rejection is part of the Cosmic Order, I suppose, and the Cosmic Order will never be fathomed by mere scribbling, tipsy mortals.

If the writer’s life sounds unenviably grim, that’s only because it is.

But consider the following, aspirers to literary greatness, before flinging yourselves

from lighthouses.

From time to time, a possibly intoxicated editor will upset the cosmic order by actually accepting one’s work. In all likelihood, this will earn one little praise, and less money. The thought of that acceptance, though, can be floated over one’s head for a time, like an umbrella, to protect one’s self-esteem from the downpour of rejections.

That isn’t much, I suppose. But it’s something.

A drop of reassurance, to a writer, goes a very long way indeed.

So does a drop of gin.

If you enjoyed this essay, kindly consider buying me a coffee.