The Best Kind of Rejection

It's never fun receiving a rejection letter from a lit mag. Especially when you've been waiting 250 days for a response. And especially when you've held out hope that the long response time might herald good news. Yesterday, after eight months and three follow-up emails, I got an email rejection from the Bellevue Literary Review.

Here's what redeemed it. A gracious note, the most detailed critique I've ever received from a lit mag editor, and the offer to review a rewrite:

Please excuse the very long delay in responding to this fine story. Unfortunately we won't be able to publish. However, we enjoyed this. The writing is strong, the images lovely, the story moves nicely. The situation is moving as well. I felt, though, that the reader needed some crucial information earlier in the story. For example, page 3...(she goes on to list very specific, granular areas for improvement)....

In any event, I hope these suggestions will be of use to you. If you wish to revise, I would take another look, however I couldn't make a commitment to publish the story at this time. Good luck with this piece. Very best wishes, Ronna Wineberg

Ronna is a writer herself with a recently published, acclaimed short story collection and clearly knows what's helpful to a fellow writer. I'll plan to send her a rewrite in the next few weeks and see what happens.