Rejections

My story "Who Goes with Ferg?", the title story of my master's thesis, has been rejected at three of the four journals I have sent it to: The Southern Review, The Black Warrior Review, and The New England Review. The New England Review was probably the nicest of the three, giving me a note of encouragement for "placing" it somewhere else and telling me that they admired the writing. Of course I got that handwritten note from Bret Lott at the Southern Review, which, like R.E.M.'s first album, either strikes me as upbeat or depressing depending on my mood. That'll happen when someone tells you that your "long-winded" story is a "fun read." He's right, though. At 26 pages, I really shouldn't have expected it to be published anywhere. I'm almost hoping that the Missouri Review, my last and best chance, will also reject the story, so that I can do some serious shaving. I guess that now I'm worried that the story doesn't have enough gravity. There's nothing really serious in it, aside from some mild sexual deviance, some anti-PC observations, and the narrator's expressed desire to have sex with his twin brother's ex. But it seems like everything I've been reading lately has something Huge and Adult pressing down on the whole thing--Death, Abuse, Crime, etc. And this story's just too madcap to hold any of that. At any rate, I imagine that it will be published somewhere. I have to remind myself that my goals last year at this time included creating just one publishable story. I should consider myself lucky I have three, possibly four.

Now go. Stop kvetching. Get out and jog around the neighborhood. Enjoy the day.