by Michael Noll
When I began my MFA program, I thought everyone would know more about books and writing than me. My high school graduating class in rural Kansas had 86 students, making us by far the largest class and largest city on Highway 36. In neighboring counties, there were schools with classes of a dozen or fewer students. As a result, when I’d meet someone from a bigger city (which is most cities), I’d assume they knew things I didn’t. And, sure enough, at the MFA program, people would reference books I’d never heard of. Frequently, the name would be foreign, and my Midwestern ear couldn’t even make out the phonics well enough to look up the writer at the library.
The business of publishing was a total mystery. Very quickly, I learned, as one does, that there were things called journals, and we were supposed to be submitting our stories to them. The only journal I knew about was Touchstone, the journal run by Kansas State University, where I did my undergrad and where I read submissions briefly until I made the mistake of wearing a fraternity tee-shirt into an editorial meeting. I was not invited back. I’d stuck around long enough, though, to learn that one of the writers published during my brief tenure had gone to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. So, while I had no intention of submitting to Touchstone, I figured another small journal would be a good place to start.
Of course, all of those small journals rejected me.
I wasn’t crushed. I’d been told to expect this. “Paper your wall with rejections,” I’d been told, so I kept a few on my desk. The fact that I was receiving mail at all was exciting—like Steve Martin finding his name in the phonebook in The Jerk, seeing the mail made me feel like I was somebody—and I’d run out to the mailbox as soon as the postal carrier had driven away.
We—the MFA students—were all in the same boat. Now and then, someone would place a story in Glimmer Train or Crazyhorse and we’d congratulate and envy them, and then I’d go look up that journal to see what it was. I was not the only one. Most of us came from working class backgrounds. I sent stories to journals in North Dakota and Alaska. Had I heard of these journals? Had I read them as every editor would like you to do? No. Their circulations were so small that I couldn’t find them in the university library. Subsisting on an $8,000 teaching stipend, I certainly wasn’t going to subscribe. My strategy was mail-and-hope, read the rejections, and start again. One day, I believed, I’d find a fatter envelope with my name on it.
One day I ripped open an envelope with my handwriting on it to find a single-sheet form letter. Unlike rejections, though, this letter ran longer than a few sentences. “Dear Michael Knoll,” it began—not a good sign. There’s no K in my name. But, whatever, I thought. A win’s a win. The body of the letter was generic boilerplate—good news, to be sure, but totally impersonal. It ended with a plea for financial support: I’d be given two contributor’s copies of the journal, but if I sold ten subscriptions to my friends and family, I’d get another couple copies. I forget the exact details, but the pitch was clear.
Also, the letter was dated incorrectly: not just with the wrong month but the wrong year. I was so ashamed that I threw the letter in the trash. I never responded. I told no one and waited in terror for the contributor’s copies to arrive, watching the street for the postal carrier so that I could immediately grab the package and toss it in the garbage before anyone discovered that I’d been scammed. Clearly, this wasn’t a real journal. If there was anything worse than being rejected, I learned, it’s being accepted and revealed as a fool.
The copies never arrived. I’ve searched the Internet to see if the story was ever published, but I can’t remember the name of the journal. I don’t even know if it was legit or not. It’s not always easy to tell. The longer you write, the more you realize that journals struggle as hard, if not harder, than writers. If writers fail, they don’t die, but if a journal fails, it ceases to be. So, is it possible that some desperate editor, in a time crunch, sent out that letter? Sure. It’s also possible that I was scammed.
I kept sending the story out. It never got picked up, though a very respectable journal did send me a long, positive letter about the editors’ great distress at not publishing my story. I didn’t share that letter with my fellow students, either. But it kept me writing and submitting. If you’re being rejected, I learned, it means you’re in the game. And being in the game is the only way you’ll receive encouragement, even if it comes with bad news.
