My Mid-American Review Rejection Story

Inspired by a story from my dear friend Rae, who keeps a blog of her own over at The Red Glasses (and doesn't hide her identity there, so I won't give her a codename here), comes a story of a personal rejection. She had submitted some of her work to the Mid-American Review, a journal quite well-known and respected within the literary community, and was written a personal rejection letter by the editorial staff. As I too have submitted to MAR, I have received letters like this as well, and thought I'd share the story of one of them that sticks out in my mind as, by far, the most amusing.

The year was 2005, and I had just graduated from West Virginia University with my Bachelor's in English and Creative Writing (which, at the time, was basically a double-major at that school). It was the summer, and I'd fancied myself a real, full-fledged writer, full of hope and promise -- having just finished a major screenplay I'd shopped to places like Tokyopop and Viz Entertainment to see if it could be turned into a graphic novel, and had also sent off several short stories to different publications, journals, and magazines to try to get my foot in the door of the world of publishing.

Please note that this was when I was young and naive, and did not yet know how much being an unemployed writer trying to make his way in the literary world would utterly suck. I truly thought that places like The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Kenyon Review would jump at the chance to publish what, in my mind, was absolutely breathtaking poetry and fiction. I had not yet ventured into the realm of nonfiction (aside from the online diary I kept back then) in a serious fashion.

Anyway, one of the pieces I sent out was entitled "The London Flat," and it was about a mentally-ill man who -- on the verge of a nervous breakdown -- left his wife, children, and all of his worldly possessions behind to go live in London and live there without telling anyone where he'd gone. The story was written in a series of diary entries by the main character, and at the end of the story it is heavily implied that the man has been dead and has been a ghost the entire time, and that his delusions and visions he was haunted by weren't ghosts he thought he'd been seeing in his apartment or drug-fueled hallucinations, but actual people moving in and out of the building over many years. It was a little Sixth Sense-y, perhaps, but even now I still think it was original enough, as well as one of the best stories I've ever written. I followed all of the submission directions, readied my SASEs, and mailed this story off to Mid-American Review, in hopes that they'd find it interesting.

I will say that back then at least, MAR wasn't as well-known as it is now. Yes, it was out there, and yes, it was one of the journals you'd heard of if you were in academia or literary circles like I was, but in my opinion it was far from one of the country's "premier" journals, being -- in my eyes at least -- second-or-third-tier at best. I could've been wrong even then, but the fact is that I don't think the journal got nearly as much respect then as it does today.

So, I waited. And waited some more. I created an account on Duotrope, which I'm sure at this point has been deleted due to inactivity on my part for the past six years, and slowly began to send out other submissions to other publications, both fiction and poetry. At the time, my fiction was most important, as I thought (and confirmed, by looking at it again several years later) that my poetry during that time was mostly crap. I also passed the time by looking for writing jobs, as I was fresh out of college and had a writing degree that I wanted to use -- so even if my work was rejected by the places I'd sent to, I might yet find a job that would let me write and publish through it.

One by one over that summer the submissions came back to me, all rejections -- sometimes via a short letter saying that the publication regretted to inform me that they couldn't use my work, sometimes by returning the entirety of the manuscript I sent them in my SASE, and sometimes via email. Rejections don't faze me now, of course -- getting hundreds of rejection letters throughout my writing career is nothing new; it is the calling card of a seasoned writing vet, and if anything makes me try harder to succeed -- but back then, before I learned to steel myself and become more jaded, they were crippling to my psyche and morale, and each one was like getting a telegram that told me another dream was dead. My screenplay/premise for a graphic novel had been rejected by both Viz and Tokyopop, all of my fiction and poetry had either been rejected and/or rejected and returned to me, and the one thing I had left that I was waiting on was my Mid-American Review submission of "The London Flat."

Finally, near the end of that summer, I received a thick envelope in the mail from MAR. Inside it was a rejection letter, of course, as well as my original manuscript, but it was one of the most unique rejection letters I've ever seen -- and I'm going to paraphrase to the best of my ability to remember, anyhow, what it said below (as I no longer have the original letter in my possession, but it is still in my parents' house in West Virginia because I wanted to eventually frame it):

Dear Brandon,

We regret to inform you that we are unable to accept your piece entitled "The London Flat" at this time. We at MAR feel that your piece is derivative and cliched in many ways, and could greatly benefit from stronger character development and a more refined narrative style. Because of this, we cannot include it in our publication, but thank you for allowing us the opportunity to read it.

Mid-American Review

That, to the best of my knowledge, is what it said, though my wording via paraphrase is probably a little off. I do, however, distinctly remember the phrase about it being "derivative," needing "stronger character development" and "a more refined narrative style."

I couldn't help but laugh at the letter, really, as laughing would keep me from crying about it (remember, I was much younger, and much more naive). More than anything else, it was this letter that made me realize how hard it would be to make it as a writer in this world, and was the real beginning of a long list of rejection letters that would come over the years. I have still, in the six years since, yet to publish any of my professional creative writing, save for my book (which I self-published) and all of the articles I wrote for both the newspaper here in Newton as well as for the newspaper back home. I have since submitted more work over the years to Mid-American Review, but never received another rejection letter that amusing from them -- just the standard fare, sadly. The next time I visit my parents, though, I will find that letter and bring it back to Kansas with me so that I can scan it into a picture file for you folks to see.

So, there's my personal Mid-American Review rejection story. Amusing, no?