Mean
Rants of the Rejected
Bradley Sands of Bust Down The Door And Eat All The Chickens just tweeted this link to an old letter he received from a disgruntled, rejected author in 2008. It seemed like a useful thing to repost for Mean Week. Here’s the beginning (wtf?):
Dear Bradley,
Where are my stories? What did I do wrong to deserve such a cold shoulder during The Mark Chapman Generation, Twin Towers, “Malvo”, academic massacre, Amish massacre, etc? Is that it, then, Bradley, you’re just going to leave me dangling? Ok, if that’s the way you feel. I’ve never seen 1 magazine in 40 years of doing this live more than a few years after being treated so shitty as you have treated me.
Any fun rants out there? Either ones you’ve received from authors or ones you’ve sent to editors?
Tags: Bust Down The Door And Eat All The Chickens
From a “dear” friend whose work I declined years ago. He sent already published poems written in styles he knew I didn’t care for. I invited him to send other work and tried to explain what I was looking for. He didn’t appreciate that:
“To be honest, I was sort of hoping for a rejection. With the exception of [removed] and a couple of other poets, I don’t much like the poems there. If direct and tight means superficial and poseurish, I guess I won’t be writing anything like that.”
I didn’t respond, then a few hours later received this “apology”:
“Sorry about my knee-jerk (with the emphasis on jerk) reaction. .[personal details removed] . I wish you’d have just said the poems don’t fit, without the advice. I would have understood that. I’m never going to write the sort of short, hip, empty of calorie type poems that seem to be what you want. To be honest, I only sent mine in response to that. I hated the [removed] poems with every fiber of my being. I thought they were trite, phony and immature, like a child saying dirty words just to titillate herself. Oops, there I go again. When I write again, I’ll write however it is I write, and if I never get published again, so be it. Anyway, you’re not crazy about my poems (mostly) and I’m not crazy about the litmag (mostly). I am however glad you are my pal, and I hope my frankness about this didn’t damage that.”
The “frankness” was a lot less insulting than the assumption I’d publish him just because we’re friends. This person didn’t like the magazine, yet still sent work that he knew quite well wasn’t the kind of work I was looking for.
This post seems redundant and dumb that way. We have something two posts down asking for rejection stories and stuff like spiked iced tea of eighth-grade, etc. I mean the rejection topic is right there, four inches away. Fuck, people. Anyone editing tonight, Blake, or do you just coast on rolling up profit reports from media machines/conglomerates, crumbling them into a fine tobacco dust, stuffing them into your Lazy Pipe, and taking a lungful?
I mean pay attention to your own fucking site. Jesus. Makes me wonder if this poser/poster even reads his own online forum? You do, right? You do read what is four inches down before you post the same subject?
Lesson or listen. You keep clapping people on the back with one leg (rather agile, you, great trick), stuffing your mouth with another, and guess what?
Not one leg left to stand on.
[Mean Week]
{red wine, light yet succulent}
Drunk-ass photo also redundant. So now HTML is the cool place to find photos of people drunk?
Where exactly IS Blake.
Dude, why not actually EDIT while you’re not sleeping much.
[Mean Week]
Am the only one bringing it? I feel sad then. And mean.
{I’m not mean}
Who says they are not mean?
My car keeps making this sound like a shrunk nacho.
From a “dear” friend whose work I declined years ago. He sent already published poems written in styles he knew I didn’t care for. I invited him to send other work and tried to explain what I was looking for. He didn’t appreciate that:
“To be honest, I was sort of hoping for a rejection. With the exception of [removed] and a couple of other poets, I don’t much like the poems there. If direct and tight means superficial and poseurish, I guess I won’t be writing anything like that.”
I didn’t respond, then a few hours later received this “apology”:
“Sorry about my knee-jerk (with the emphasis on jerk) reaction. .[personal details removed] . I wish you’d have just said the poems don’t fit, without the advice. I would have understood that. I’m never going to write the sort of short, hip, empty of calorie type poems that seem to be what you want. To be honest, I only sent mine in response to that. I hated the [removed] poems with every fiber of my being. I thought they were trite, phony and immature, like a child saying dirty words just to titillate herself. Oops, there I go again. When I write again, I’ll write however it is I write, and if I never get published again, so be it. Anyway, you’re not crazy about my poems (mostly) and I’m not crazy about the litmag (mostly). I am however glad you are my pal, and I hope my frankness about this didn’t damage that.”
The “frankness” was a lot less insulting than the assumption I’d publish him just because we’re friends. This person didn’t like the magazine, yet still sent work that he knew quite well wasn’t the kind of work I was looking for.
This post seems redundant and dumb that way. We have something two posts down asking for rejection stories and stuff like spiked iced tea of eighth-grade, etc. I mean the rejection topic is right there, four inches away. Fuck, people. Anyone editing tonight, Blake, or do you just coast on rolling up profit reports from media machines/conglomerates, crumbling them into a fine tobacco dust, stuffing them into your Lazy Pipe, and taking a lungful?
I mean pay attention to your own fucking site. Jesus. Makes me wonder if this poser/poster even reads his own online forum? You do, right? You do read what is four inches down before you post the same subject?
Lesson or listen. You keep clapping people on the back with one leg (rather agile, you, great trick), stuffing your mouth with another, and guess what?
Not one leg left to stand on.
[Mean Week]
{red wine, light yet succulent}
Drunk-ass photo also redundant. So now HTML is the cool place to find photos of people drunk?
Where exactly IS Blake.
Dude, why not actually EDIT while you’re not sleeping much.
[Mean Week]
Am the only one bringing it? I feel sad then. And mean.
{I’m not mean}
Who says they are not mean?
My car keeps making this sound like a shrunk nacho.
A little heartbeat.
I’m THIS close to saying That was Harsh. Is anyone doing Mean Week correctly?
A little heartbeat.
I’m THIS close to saying That was Harsh. Is anyone doing Mean Week correctly?
only you my friend.
only you my friend.
I just spent an hour looking for this on my computer – Hate mail that my friend received regarding his zine, along with poetry submissions. Think I’m going to post it on my blog. It’s too good not too.
Editors, Chiaroscuro:
I’m stymied as to how you could even name a magazine a word you doubtless can’t pronounce, and it’s a miracle you spell it right, since you’re all obviously demented and ignoramic orangutans.
It’s beyond my ken that grown American men, ostensibly holding the high-school diploma or beyond, could found a magazine so blatantly and unabashedly vile and rotten and illiterate as this Chiaroscuro debacle, which if I had founded or put out monthly wouldn’t have the nerve or the gall to show my face outside a black paper bag.
How is it possible for grown American men to be so downright and outright stupid as to produce this thing–without being so ashamed as to want to kill yourselves?
You make an apology for typos! Hell, typos are the least of your worries. You can’t even pick the right words you mean from the English language! You’re masters of malopropism. It isn’t even that, it’s outright ignorance! Done with pride, yet!
When I saw “uncomprehendable” I thought, is that misspelled? Hell, misspelled? It isn’t even the word. The word you want is incomprehensible. In the adjacent column you’ve got “compliments,” meaning “complements.” In the swatch above that (they’re not really columns–your format stinks) you’ve got “temporally,” meaning “temporarily.” Do you engage your brains at all before you start writing? On p. 7 of August issue you’ve got “who’s” meaning “whose,” “tradition” meaning “traditional,” and you think it’s spelled “cubical.” Could you have less gray matter? I think not.
The verb is “outdid,” one word, not “out did”–what puerility!
Last page: only an ass thinks the word is “alright.” “Others opinions” is senseless–do you think you want to make it possessive somehow instead of plural? Would you even know how to begin? You don’t use “etc.” in formal prose. You say “and so on.” “Was is possible”? Could it be “it”? Do you use your eyes there, or are they on vacation along with your brains?
Whom do you think you’re kidding with this whole vile, rotten, putrid, disgusting piece of dried-up, stinking, caked-white little dog turd each month? Do you have some notion you’re “literary,” or have the vaguest inkling about English or how to write? What a crock if you do! You’re frauds! I wouldn’t want a butterfingers doing either my piano-concertizing or my neurosurgery, and that’s how you equate, you complete charlatans and stupid asses, having no shame about it!
Whom do you think you’re kidding tossing around extreme vulgarities totally extraneously and gratuitously with no meaning to them but to display that you think you’re smart? You don’t approach the ability to apply to be smart. The f-word as you pepper it is not smart, not funny, not cute, not interesting, and a crashing bore. If you think you’re coming off smart by “insulting” readers with it, calling them by it every few lines, you’re mistaken. All you’re doing is displaying your idiocy and the nearly complete absence of any kind of heart, brain, or soul–as writers. You’re not writers, you’re frauds, and stupid frauds, at that!
If you think that boring, asinine, monotonous and illiterate elephant diarrhea you print each month and call “fiction” is fiction, you need brain burial. Nothing could be a bigger bore than these maggotty slices of tripe you serve up as “literature.” You’re the laughing stock of the nation, and all you’re doing with Chiaroscuro is blatantly and shamelessly advertising ignorance. Why do you wish to do that? I can’t predict anything but failure for all of you if you continue to support this vile, deteriorating form of social anarchy and chaos–failure as writers, but most of all, failure as souls. Right now, you’re asses–and I’m flummoxed that you could even come up with the word “chiaroscuro.” Is there one staff member who can pronounce or spell it or know what it means? If you want a chiaroscuronic magazine, then learn to write chiaroscuronically. Judging from the last two issues, you’re writing with your anuses–and the earth would be better off you were on Uranus.
A Real Winner/ Salt Lake City
I just spent an hour looking for this on my computer – Hate mail that my friend received regarding his zine, along with poetry submissions. Think I’m going to post it on my blog. It’s too good not too.
Editors, Chiaroscuro:
I’m stymied as to how you could even name a magazine a word you doubtless can’t pronounce, and it’s a miracle you spell it right, since you’re all obviously demented and ignoramic orangutans.
It’s beyond my ken that grown American men, ostensibly holding the high-school diploma or beyond, could found a magazine so blatantly and unabashedly vile and rotten and illiterate as this Chiaroscuro debacle, which if I had founded or put out monthly wouldn’t have the nerve or the gall to show my face outside a black paper bag.
How is it possible for grown American men to be so downright and outright stupid as to produce this thing–without being so ashamed as to want to kill yourselves?
You make an apology for typos! Hell, typos are the least of your worries. You can’t even pick the right words you mean from the English language! You’re masters of malopropism. It isn’t even that, it’s outright ignorance! Done with pride, yet!
When I saw “uncomprehendable” I thought, is that misspelled? Hell, misspelled? It isn’t even the word. The word you want is incomprehensible. In the adjacent column you’ve got “compliments,” meaning “complements.” In the swatch above that (they’re not really columns–your format stinks) you’ve got “temporally,” meaning “temporarily.” Do you engage your brains at all before you start writing? On p. 7 of August issue you’ve got “who’s” meaning “whose,” “tradition” meaning “traditional,” and you think it’s spelled “cubical.” Could you have less gray matter? I think not.
The verb is “outdid,” one word, not “out did”–what puerility!
Last page: only an ass thinks the word is “alright.” “Others opinions” is senseless–do you think you want to make it possessive somehow instead of plural? Would you even know how to begin? You don’t use “etc.” in formal prose. You say “and so on.” “Was is possible”? Could it be “it”? Do you use your eyes there, or are they on vacation along with your brains?
Whom do you think you’re kidding with this whole vile, rotten, putrid, disgusting piece of dried-up, stinking, caked-white little dog turd each month? Do you have some notion you’re “literary,” or have the vaguest inkling about English or how to write? What a crock if you do! You’re frauds! I wouldn’t want a butterfingers doing either my piano-concertizing or my neurosurgery, and that’s how you equate, you complete charlatans and stupid asses, having no shame about it!
Whom do you think you’re kidding tossing around extreme vulgarities totally extraneously and gratuitously with no meaning to them but to display that you think you’re smart? You don’t approach the ability to apply to be smart. The f-word as you pepper it is not smart, not funny, not cute, not interesting, and a crashing bore. If you think you’re coming off smart by “insulting” readers with it, calling them by it every few lines, you’re mistaken. All you’re doing is displaying your idiocy and the nearly complete absence of any kind of heart, brain, or soul–as writers. You’re not writers, you’re frauds, and stupid frauds, at that!
If you think that boring, asinine, monotonous and illiterate elephant diarrhea you print each month and call “fiction” is fiction, you need brain burial. Nothing could be a bigger bore than these maggotty slices of tripe you serve up as “literature.” You’re the laughing stock of the nation, and all you’re doing with Chiaroscuro is blatantly and shamelessly advertising ignorance. Why do you wish to do that? I can’t predict anything but failure for all of you if you continue to support this vile, deteriorating form of social anarchy and chaos–failure as writers, but most of all, failure as souls. Right now, you’re asses–and I’m flummoxed that you could even come up with the word “chiaroscuro.” Is there one staff member who can pronounce or spell it or know what it means? If you want a chiaroscuronic magazine, then learn to write chiaroscuronically. Judging from the last two issues, you’re writing with your anuses–and the earth would be better off you were on Uranus.
A Real Winner/ Salt Lake City
wait you didnt even like the picutre? i think its cute.
wait you didnt even like the picutre? i think its cute.
add ‘stymied’ to that list of words that must die. i liked this letter a lot. it made me laugh
add ‘stymied’ to that list of words that must die. i liked this letter a lot. it made me laugh
“ignoramic orangutans” is a king among insults.
“ignoramic orangutans” is a king among insults.
Great letter. I appreciate the energy there.
Great letter. I appreciate the energy there.
did john cleese write that letter?
did john cleese write that letter?
haaa………. lazy pipe.
haaa………. lazy pipe.
“you need brain burial”…
thats just dope
“you need brain burial”…
thats just dope