Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
Forty years. Forty, God damned years I’ve been writin. Ain’t had nothin published in that time. Alls I got to show for my work this decade is emails with autoresponder messages.
Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately blah blah blah
Thems not even the worst. The worst is no response at all. Sometimes I have to go into my Sent messages and check I sent the damned thing. Maybe it was lost by the email man? If that’s true, he’s been sleepin on the job a long time.
Least with an autoresponder, I get somethin. A pulse. A we see your efforts buddy. Even if they choke up my inbox, I keep em. As a reminder. Of what? Shit, I dunno. Same way some people keep their receipts I guess. ‘Cept, I ain’t plannin on returnin my stories. The opposite. I want you to take them.
Was better before email. Rejection letters back in those days IF you was lucky. Someone, a real person, actually typed out—I’m talkin actually physically typed out—a line or, maybe two, if feelin generous to say that you weren’t good enough. That takes effort. I appreciate that. A handwritten note? Oh that’s gettin closer to the promised land. You got potential, son. Keep trying. Can I get a Hallelujah! I got a few of those over the years. The keep tryins, obviously.
All those rejection letters got stored up and I printed out. Put them to good use. Made paper mache dolls outta them. Created a little rock band of dolls. I call them The Critics. Got four members. Each with their own instrument. Unlike me, they get rave reviews. Now there’s a group with potential.
They ain’t the original band though. I had to replace a few members along the way. In the early days, I submitted to ParaSuperNormal Magazine. Was the mag to get into if you were anyone in the nineties. Them rejection letters were sent on the nicest pulpy paper. Those made up the lead singer. Not long after I set little Billy-Joe on fire (creative differences), the paper went defunct. Kaput. Singers and their egos, eh?
Mindy, my badass bassist, was created from rejection slips I got from a publishing house in New York. The parent company went under pretty quick. Funny, that happened around the same time my ol dog Rocky got her teeth into it, ripping it up into tiny pieces. Jealous much?
People say you should have an agent. To help open doors and get your work out there. But agents won’t just work with anyone. You got to be on the same wavelength. Trust is a big thing. Me? I had Mr. Paul Deaver. He had a long career as an editor before, so he knew his stuff. Sometimes I’d send him some of my short stories before publishers or competition judges would get a sniff. The notes he sent back were jumbled, with red marker everywhere. It was a real mess. I created a little drummer from his notes. Ain’t rock n’roll unless you got a drum beat. Or so I thought. A change of heart saw the drummer leave the band. The shredder got him. Funny thing, Deaver disappeared too. Never answered my calls. Not meant to be, I guess.
Dolls are harder to make now ‘cos there’s no paper bein sent. Blame efficiency and the ecowarriors. I got a digital review system worked out on my website now. Collects feedback. People can leave their rating, or post a comment or shoot me an email to tell me if they like or don’t like a story. I print the reviews out at home, and bingo! another paper layer to add to one of the dolls.
I’m almost finished the fifth and final member of the band. A couple more reviews should do it. Not sure how long this group will stay together though. You know what bands are like.
Anyways, I’m always open to feedback. Hope you are too…
This story was written for the ambitious creative project, ‘The Weekly Kook’, where I release a brand new short story every week for a year, totalling…yep, you guessed it – 52 stories.
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