Rejection is painful. Honestly, I think the rejection letters I’ve received for my writing were more painful to me than asking someone out on a date who said no. Maybe because I spent more time crafting the work? Or maybe it just had more of me in it. I certainly didn’t work very hard at pick-up lines. Whatever the reason, the rejections hurt. A lot.

Knowing that, I personally hate writing rejection letters. I know we can’t publish everything. I know some things aren’t quite ready for prime time or don’t fit our guidelines or would be better suited elsewhere. When we’re not so swamped that we think we’ll never catch up, we try to tell the author why we didn’t accept their work. If there’s something about the work we like, we try to say so. We do that because we’ve been on the other side of that letter. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that we’re saying no.

Yet, even being told no, we have been tremendously blessed with authors who have responded to us with a letter of thanks. They say thanks for reading. Thanks for considering. Thanks for your time. Thanks for the comments. I’ve been so impressed with the quality of the individuals who have submitted their stories to us.

So I want to say thank you in return. Thank you from us to all the authors who continue to show gracious professionalism in the face of rejection. We sincerely wish you the best and I hope one day we’ll be able to say yes.