A few posts ago I talked about how I'd forgotten to withdraw a piece submitted to a literary magazine I thought had gone defunct, but then they (luckily) rejected me anyway. Now I'm not so certain that people might just be rejecting me for the fun of it.
I checked the mail when I got home today and found a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with the return address of a literary magazine I'd recently submitted to--a place where I'd remembered to withdraw my submission. There was a reply of thanks to my withdrawal email, congrats on landing the story, and well-wishes on any future work, but apparently someone didn't update their records, because I tore open the envelope to find that it was rejected anyway. Unnecessarily. Whee. OK, maybe there was some small part of me that hoped the editor was mailing me personally to tell me just how jealous he (not being sexist by assumption, the editor is male) was that he couldn't publish it himself. Don't tell me you wouldn't have felt the same.
After further consideration, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd have been in the same pickle had they mistakenly accepted it (see earlier post), but I still have copies of the withdrawal and reply, so I'm golden.
Whew, I'm plum tuckered out from posting after all this time away, and this one wore me out. I believe it may be time to knock down a few more pages of Tropic of Cancer and call it a night--it's been too long since I've read this one.
Or, whoever processed your withdrawal email threw your SASE on the pile of "not to publish" instead of in the recycling, and an industrious office intern stuffed it with the formal rejection and mailed it back.
ReplyDeleteRejectionable is such an excellent word, however, I'd be loath to have missed the chance to read it and absorb it into my own neo-vocabulary.