Rejection Notes

An editor friend received the below email in response to a story he had rejected.

Good sir,
Your rejection of the walls proves you are a dunderheaded ignoramus. It is the classic story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman. It is sad that you, good sir, are in charge of what is and is not approved. An editor who uses, “omg” is by far, just some crazy man within his own world who lives with cats and is overweight, got picked on a lot as a fat child and wants to play in a pretend world where he is king and queen. Please, good sir, go to college. Take American Literature and bone up on your skills, read some books on editing and volunteer for an actual magazine as proofreader before naming yourself the judge of author’s work in your fat little world. By being a dunderhead in a faux position, you are stifling people with actual talent, unlike fatheaded and fat-bellied self. A game of jealousy on your part, will only hurt your overfed belly and jiggle your neck fat as you heckle from behind a monitor which the state paid for due to your psychological disability. Waddle yourself into a brick and mortar book store and pick up a collection of American Literature and do some reading. That, is free advice from a man with a degree in the science of rocketry.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman is undoubtedly a classic. At 6,000 words it is also 4,000 words longer than the limit for my friend’s magazine. So a degree in rocketry appears to provide neither basic arithmetical skills nor graciousness in rejection (the letter writer had had one of his own stories returned previously).