February 9th, 2010 / 10:27 pm
Web Hype & Web Journals
Does anyone have the balls to do this?
Socrates Adams-Florou and Crispin Best just started a new online magazine. It is called Rejection Digest.
If you have written something that someone has rejected, we want to read it. Send it to thisstoryhasbeenrejected@rocketmail.com as soon as you can. In order to qualify for submission, we also require a copy of a rejection e-mail of some sort. There is a special rule. If you can provide us FIVE rejection e-mails, we GUARANTEE publication. If you have less than five, we do not guarantee publication.
Dare you.
Tags: rejection, rejections
Will this look good on my CV?
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February 9th, 2010 / 11:05 pmm—
I don’t have a CV.
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February 10th, 2010 / 5:36 pmm—
Am I misusing the term ‘CV’?
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A magazine full of writing that has been rejected 5+ times? The problem is the assumption. rejected=edgy? Rejection might=suck. I just hope no teenage poets read HTML. I suppose they do not.
Get ready for some awesome zombie stories.
Then again, I have this one poem about dachshunds…
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February 9th, 2010 / 11:15 pmmarkleidner—
lol @ rocketmail
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February 9th, 2010 / 11:30 pmTrey—
I don’t know, Sean. I think they know what they’re getting into. Here, from their guidelines:
“It is very unlikely that we will publish extremely offensive material. It is very likely that we will publish good material. It is likely that we will publish very bad material. “
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February 9th, 2010 / 11:39 pmchristian—
“I just hope no teenage poets read HTML.”
you must be talking about the code, right?
i thought only teenage poets read HTML Giant.
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February 10th, 2010 / 1:14 amRoss Brighton—
or teenagers at heart……
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February 10th, 2010 / 6:53 pmPaul—
or Ken Baumann
February 10th, 2010 / 8:17 pmKen Baumann—
Hi, Paul.
if you submit a poem 4 times to this journal and it gets rejected, what happens if you submit it a fifth time
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February 10th, 2010 / 6:16 amcrispin—
i think you know, mark
we don’t use caps lightly
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Done had, http://www.rejectedq.com/
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February 10th, 2010 / 1:12 amdarby—
right. i thought this sounded familiar.
not that im against it. though i just now went to see if i have anything i think is worth something thats been rejected five times and i realized that just about every piece that gets rejected always gets massively revised afterword because i never sim sub anymore, so i dont think it would be fair even to say that any consistent piece of writing i have has been rejected more than once.
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February 10th, 2010 / 4:23 amcrispin—
holy mackerel
but did those guys have a rocketmail account?
i think not
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Good point, Christian.
Wow, A.
Carbon.
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Isn’t this how McSweeney’s originally started?
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February 10th, 2010 / 1:12 amMark C—
sorta. but you didn’t need to be rejected by 5. there’s something scary about that.
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February 10th, 2010 / 1:51 amLincoln—
No, I don’t think McSweneey’s was started to randomly promote any work that has been rejected regardless of quality.
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February 10th, 2010 / 5:01 amsocrates adams—
This isn’t quite what we are doing.
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February 10th, 2010 / 1:40 pmLincoln—
Hey socrates, sorry, I wasn’t trying to misrepresent you. I guess I’m reading the mission statement wrong, because I thought it said any work that had been rejected five times would automatically be published and the journal was admitting “It is very likely that we will publish good material. It is likely that we will publish very bad material.“
Either way, McSweeney’s had no special rejection mission. They started in part to publish styles of writing they didn’t think were properly represented in big magazines, but that’s how a ton of magazines start, no?
February 10th, 2010 / 1:43 pmLincoln—
ah, just saw your post below
February 10th, 2010 / 10:44 amJamie GP—
Yeah — there are stories about Mr. Dave working at Esquire and being unhappy about how everything he thought was great fiction was being rejected… so thought to have a quarterly that just published what the mainstream glossies weren’t going to publish. Surely only partially the starting point — but lent itself to the kind of longform work that was in the early issues (and then would become everything to the Believer, etc.).
But that doesn’t mean the whole field was plowed, that’s for sure. Find good wherever good is to be found, etc. etc.
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February 10th, 2010 / 12:17 pmLee—
Yea, sort of — Not rejected stories, but stories that were accepted but “killed” by mags like Esquire. One of Arthur Bradford’s early stories was definitely slated for publication but got pulled, then published in McSwys.
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Maybe not re: McSweeney’s, but I am fond of Redheaded Stepchild, which does do this …
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February 10th, 2010 / 4:41 amCheryl—
And there was also Ugly Cousin, which did something of the same. (Although they seem to be on hiatus).
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“Rejection Digest: For when you need your rejection more regularly”
or
“Rejection Digest: Not even first in the field of rejection”
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February 10th, 2010 / 4:44 amJaney Smith—
Rejection Digest: For Rejects Only. (I’m a reject!)
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Hi – just to make it clear, in order to qualify for submission to Rejection Digest the piece does not have to have been rejected five times. Just one rejection slip will do. If you have five however it means that you will be GUARANTEED publication.
We had a hunch that this was not an original idea. The main thing is that we are concentrating not so much on the quality of the writing, but more on the idea of rejection and why it is that so much of what we write gets rejected.
We want interesting writing. The more interesting the better. It does not have to be good.
All the best,
Socrates
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February 10th, 2010 / 5:28 amMerzmensch—
Do you accept also rejections in foreign language? Or only English rejections?
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February 10th, 2010 / 5:33 amsocrates adams—
I think we will have to stick with English for the time being. I mean, I am learning Japanese but I only know four words so far.
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February 10th, 2010 / 11:50 amMerzmensch—
Oh OK, Japanese is also good, because I’m also writing metalingual textes involving Japanese.
Anyway, thank you.
Obviously, some of the writing will be very good.
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I wonder, if it will get the size of “For Godot”…
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sounds like a good idea but i only get rejected by girls
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February 10th, 2010 / 5:54 pmMatthew Simmons—
Will someone from this journal GUARANTEE they will go out on a date with me if I can provide five women who have rejected my advances?
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February 10th, 2010 / 6:37 pmsocrates adams—
Yes. But we only except women in pdf format.
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I’m surprised at people getting hung up on originality. Nothing is truly original any more, after all. Indeed, this comment has more or less been written on HTMLGIANT at least twenty-seven times in the months I’ve been reading the site.
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February 10th, 2010 / 11:59 amStu—
Well, who needs substance anymore when gimmicks are enough to impress?
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February 10th, 2010 / 6:36 pmsocrates adams—
No one.
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February 16th, 2010 / 6:49 pmmark—
As my Dear Old Dad would say, “If ya can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with bullsh!t”
Smart man, that one.
I like the idea that “interesting” would be the criterion rather than “good” or “bad.” I like that in some situations perhaps I would not know whether a piece was selected because an editor thought it was really good or egregiously awful. Sort of like that restaurant where you eat in pitch darkness, and it (purportedly) utterly alters the experience of eating.
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February 10th, 2010 / 5:33 pmsocrates adams—
I think this really nicely sums up what we are trying to achieve. Thanks Tim.
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color me impressed with the paint skills
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I’ve got art that’s been rejected (by literary websites, no less) if you’re looking to upgrade that brilliantly mspainted portrait. Unfortunately, the art has no direct illustrative relevance to the theme of your site…
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