Is Anybody Out There? One Writer on the Purgatory of Submission

There’s something that people do, but not everyone does it. It involves a hamburger, a shelf, and a lot of time. It goes like this: buy a hamburger from McDonald’s, then just leave it on a shelf to see if it rots. (Spoiler Alert: It doesn’t. It quickly dries out and without moisture, mold won’t grow.)

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately as a metaphor for submitting. Not writing itself (although a book that lasts is comparable to a burger that won’t rot) but submitting. The act that follows writing but precedes being published, assuming success is the end result. (Spoiler Alert: It usually isn’t.)

We’ve all been there. We send a piece of ourselves out into the world and then wait to see what happens. And we try not to take it personally. But unless you’ve written a manual about the proper application of an electronic device, there’s a part of you in your work and you want to see it do well. It’s the literary equivalent of writing a note that says, “Do you like me? Circle Y or N,” and then getting it back with “N” circled, assuming you get it back at all. Ghosting is alive and well in the submissions process, and sometimes it’s even preferable. When you receive an extremely late rejection—so late that it falls into the Rip Van Winkle category—it feels like a slap in the face.