The New Yorker rejects itself

Disclaimer: I repeatedly refer to myself in the third person in this post. It is not a sign of my megalomania, but rather a linguistic trick used to help with clarity during reading.

Last night I dreamt of receiving yet another rejection for one of my flash fiction stories. 

I remember the disappointment from my dream as if I was reading the thanks-but-no-thanks-email right now. It's a familiar feeling: the same that washed over the romantic girl who spent her pre-teen and teen years perpetually in love with some guy who never asked her to dance at the school parties.

True, it might not have been my secret loves’ fault they didn't recognize my vast potential to become a fine  young woman someday. My incisive habit of buying clothes three sizes too big, hiding behind glasses my mom picked, cutting my hair as if I wanted to punish it for some unknown reason, and being too shy to communicate with the other sex like a normal human being, might have had something to do with it. 

This is all clear to me now, but back then I used to doubt my worth as a human being all the time and wonder what made me so invisible to the objects of my affection. Considering I first fell in love in kindergarten and didn't stop being in love until I left high school, we’re talking about a lifetime’s worth of rejections packed in just a few years.

I realize now, that my long past of being silently said “no” to by boys with brown, blue and green eyes, was just a preparation for the rest of my life as a writer. So, I like to think that I have some kind of an enduring advantage over all the popular girls and boys of the world that dated in high school who might share my dreams of publication now. 

Still, last night's dream propelled me back in time, to somewhere in the mid-90s as I wrote tear-strewn poems of heartbreak and sorrow.... 

No means no!

And then I read an article that made me feel just a wee bit better: The New Yorker rejects itself.

For those too lazy to click on the link I’ll sum it up. A published writer decided to conduct a literary experiment. He took one of the stories The New Yorker had previously published, changed the title and sent it to The New Yorker again, posing as an unpublished writer asking for it to be considered by the Holy Grail of literary magazines. 

After waiting a considerable amount of time, he was notified that his story was rejected, wishing him the best of luck finding a caring home for it somewhere else.

The experiment raises a lot of questions:

Assuming one is indeed a decent writer, is publication a sheer event of luck, depending on random factors such as

a) the fluttering of a butterfly's wings somewhere in Kuala Lumpur on the day of the submission, 

b) what happened in the last episode of Breaking Bad that ruined the mood of the person reading the story, 

c) the alignment of the stars in the sky when the editor clicks on “Open file”? 

Do some established literary journals frown upon the new, undiscovered and struggling-to-be-heard writers, for the mere reason that they are just starting out? Is it enough to be a good writer, or is publication also a matter of prestige?

No matter what, I feel like stroking the head of my 14-year-old self wearing the horrible glasses with the non-existent confidence. I would like to tell her that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't only her fault she was alone. Maybe she did some things right and the reason she didn't have a boyfriend was because she didn’t know how to attract attention to herself. Or maybe the boys she liked were not the right ones for her. Whatever the reason, in the end it all worked out for the best. 

She would never consider herself not good enough now. 

Never in a million years would she doubt her self-worth or her ability to dance. Because she knows: when everything’s said and done, she is a pretty awesome dancer!