Participate! Submit!
Scraps showcases the abandoned work of writers and artists.
In this exercise, abandoned writing is any piece of writing that the author has indefinitely shelved after receiving a series of rejection letters from traditional publishing venues. These pieces should be complete and polished, and mostly competent, but not quite good enough. Think 4th place runner-up. Or 5th or 6th.
In addition to showcasing the abandoned work, I would like to present excerpts from rejection letters, as well as the authors’ own thoughts on why their work fell short.
If you would like to participate, please email rejectionscraps@gmail.com with the following materials pasted into the body of the email (no attachments):
1. a piece of abandoned writing (1-8,000 words of anything)
2. a sample of rejection letters from publishers (5ish, but the more the better)
3. a brief reflection on the work and what went wrong (750-ish words)
This is an ugly enterprise, so don't worry if the writing is ugly, and don’t worry about polishing the work before submitting. Partially, this is a reversal and an exorcism—I will be accepting your work for publication while you simultaneously reject the piece. In this way, you can think of your reflection as another rejection letter that you’re writing to yourself and the piece.
If accepted, I will write an introduction for each piece with what I liked and what worked.
As for the submitted rejection letters, they should be edited to remove salutations, the journal name, sign offs, etc. leaving behind the bare rejection and any comments from the editor (ideally, one or two of your rejections will have some kind of personalized response).
For example: “After careful consideration of ‘What is the Cat in this Metaphor?’ we regret that it does not meet our current needs at this time.”
The removal of the journal name and extraneous info is my attempt to center this exercise on work, rejection, and toil. There is a banality to repeated rejection that transcends institutions. As a writer, I understand the excitement of a complimentary rejection from a dream journal, but this is an exercise to cast off the accumulated rejection and pressures of creative work.
For more examples, check out any of the previous posts, but also don’t stress too hard. There will be plenty of time to organize the material.
This is an intentional work in progress. A fun experiment. Submissions are free. There is a tip jar. The tentative schedule is to post two stories a month. Eventually, this project may end. Submit before it’s too late!
Accepted authors will receive a $20 honorarium via Venmo, but they most likely won’t be paid in a timely manner. If you’re submitting, you know what I’m talking about.
Also, I have a seal of approval (sort of):
Final Note: I would be remiss if I did not mention the barrier of entry created by the requirement of rejection letters. In many instances, a submission to a literary journal requires a small fee. More likely than not, an individual with 8 rejection letters in their hand spent money to acquire them (I did!). In requiring rejection letters, this project does mirror that barrier.
To me, the freer the better, but many literary journals obviously require funds to operate, and are sometimes operated by people who don’t pay themselves. All those wonderful editors and readers! Thus, I also wanted to acknowledge that capitalism is a monster that eats everyone.
But this project is writer and rejection focused.
So while this project does not expressly consider the larger economic forces at play within the literary world, it does attempt to acknowledge them. If you have any questions or concerns, send them to rejectionscraps@gmail.com
Until then: Many happy failures!