It's 3:01 a.m. and I'm still at it:
I've been
receiving rejection letters for about 30 years now. Journals, magazines,
galleries, book publishers, festivals -- "Not right," "No thank
you," "Doesn't fit," "Almost," "Huh?"...
every kind of rejection possible, some crushing. I have no idea what my success
to failure rate is -- as a teenager, I started burning my "Declined"
notices; now I immediately, permanently delete them -- but it has been a life
of rejections (even more than art). Every now and again, however, I receive a
note and think to myself, "That's gotta be a mistake," and I may even
follow up with a doe-eyed, "Are you sure?" letter. If I ever field a
response it's usually, "Oh, we're sure." But once a decade (for a
grand total of three times ever) I receive a follow-up that all but says,
"We made a mistake. Congratulations." Sure, Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum,... but these
fortune changes seem to come from a wholly divine place. Shifts happen. Who am
I to question Apollo, Xochipilli, Saraswati, and/or Pan?
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