Please, Just Reject Me.

It may come as a surprise to you, but I am not a famous writer. I am barely even a not-really published writer. I write shit constantly, I submit shit constantly. I answer ads for people looking for writers constantly. I mean constantly, like every day. And I’ll tell you what, what I hear back most often is…..nothing. Radio silence.

Remember this guy? The scary wolf/Nothing from the Never Ending Story? Yeah, he sucks, right? It's like that.

You’d think I’d be hardened to rejection, which I sort of am, but no response is not rejection. It’s juts nothing, and nothing is starting to make me go in-fucking-sane. Why? Why is nothing worse than actual rejection? Well, it’s very schizophrenic, let me see if I can explain it. 1. If you don’t respond, if you say NOTHING to me, it keeps alive this little coal of hope that maybe, just maybe there is a tiny flickering chance in Hell I have a chance with your company. That little coal is back there, in my brain, pulsating this message: “maybemaybemaybewhatifwhatifwhatif” all the time. 2. It kills my soul to get no response. What you are telling me is not just, “No thanks, you suck.” but, “You suck so much, you aren’t even worth my time to send you an email to tell you you suck.” So, simultaneously I have a little burning ember of hope while also believing that I am a total suckass loser. See how that makes me go insane?

Rejection allows me to let go, move on, jauntily even, “Oh, I’m not qualified? Cest la vie!” Sometimes when I get rejection letters, companies even THANK me for being interested in their company (I love you Groupon, thanks for validating my existence. Yes, I applied to write stuff for Groupon. It would have been awesome.) But rejections are few and far between, I’d say probably one in one hundred.

So, please, when you get my submission or resume or anyone else’s for that matter, take five minutes to send out an e-mail to tell us someone else is better.  Or better yet, just publish my shit.

5 thoughts on “Please, Just Reject Me.

  1. There is nothing worse than being ignored. It drives me NUTS. And it’s my favorite tool to use against people who suck. (to clarify: you don’t suck. because look, i’m not ignoring.)

  2. Thanks, Alex! I’m glad you don’t ignore me. 🙂 I just feel that there are a lot of job applicants and writers being turned into schizophrenics these days from….the Nothing…It’s got to stop! Also, I really want to watch The Never Ending Story now.

  3. Amen sister. I don’t even know why I get so nervous emailing my resume anymore. It’s not like anyone sees it apparently! I think we both need to try that whole “following up” route though and become nicely stalkerish for a couple weeks after. I know that’s the only way I ever looked at most of the resumes that were sent to us. I’d finally be like, “Ugh, stop calling and emailing me! Fine, I’ll look at your damn resume that’s been buried in my inbox for three weeks!”

  4. Well, true, but then I get the follow up ignore too, which makes me feel even MORE losery. Maybe I should put right in the cover letter, “Please at least let me know if you got this, one more ignore and I’m going right over the deep end.”

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