Just Like a Real Writer

Yesterday I got my first rejection letter from a magazine, to which I had submitted a piece of my writing, from the New Yorker, no less. Finally, I feel like a real writer. Rather than feel dejected about this, I found it, in some ways promising. There are certainly some sentences of encouragement in there. Please allow me to share it with you.

It reads:

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your submission.

After careful review, the panel has come to the conclusion, your thoughts, and, indeed, your writing, appear to be nothing more than tepid nonsense from a cruel and unhealthy mind. And we are all utterly perplexed and saddened at your use of commas and semi-colons, throwing them around, as you do, like sheets to the wind. You sir, are the master of nothing.

We regularly receive submissions from such writers as Ian McEwin and David Sedaris. All truly great men. Funny men. Men who have lived and died a thousand times. Men who, unlike you sir, wield the pen like a sabre. Men of honour. Men who have bedded a thousand women, traversed a thousand oceans and lived to tell the tale in prose that will make you shiver in delight at its pure genius.

So we could not help wondering, what on God’s green earth were you thinking, sending us this preposterous half-baked dribble? Had you been drinking? Is it not enough that you are condemned to live with your own thoughts; that you want also to share these with others? And what’s worse, that you want us to be willing accomplices in this act, an act, that amounts to nothing short of ‘literacide’. I mean, this is New York for Christ’s sake! Not some backwater swamp like – where did you say you were? Saigon? I mean, are you kidding me?

Sir, you have succeeded only in shaming yourself and you should know that the writing world will recover from this blight, this bruise upon its beautiful skin.

As Chekhov (who, even in death, is a much greater writer than you and still regularly submits to this magazine) once said, "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass."

The glint sir! The glint! Not this horseradish bread soaked in milk you seem to have mistaken for writing.

Since receiving your submission, we have taken steps to upgrade our spam detection system in the hope that this kind of mistake doesn’t happen in the future. But, it will be, with much trepidation, that we next approach our inboxes.

Please don’t contact this office again.

Yours in Sympathy,

The New Yorker