What You Wish For...

My husband and I were having a conversation about the wording of rejections prompted by this post by Cliff. Cliff's post also led me to David Keeling's blog A Writing Year and his rating of rejections. I think it's a great idea to encourage journals to consider their words carefully since they are, in fact, in the word business. Anyway, I was telling my husband about some of the less-than-desirable worded rejections and I ended up saying, only half joking, "my ideal would be something that read: Dear Katrina Denza, the only reason we won't be publishing your story is that we ran out of room." Hehe.

So a week later what did I receive? A form rejection notice from New Delta Review that says (sans the Dear Katrina Denza):

We're sorry that we don't have room to publish your work in our upcoming issue. Thank you for submitting. Please forgive the form slip and consider us in the future.

At first I laughed at the wording of it until Tom reminded me it was exactly what I'd wished for in a form rejection slip. So...If I were grading rejections I'd have to give New Delta Review an A+.