If I had an award for the most disgusting rejection letter ever, I think this one would win it! Scratch that. This one WOULD win it!! I'm still at a loss for what to say. Perhaps I'll begin with my letter opening experience.

It's always a bad sign when you receive a letter in your own handwriting addressed to yourself. This is called an SASE (Self-Address Stamped Envelope) which you include with your submission, postage paid, so the publication can send you your fine rejection letter! The fruit of your efforts! Ok, so this part I'm used to. I open the package, rather giddy at the thought of reading a new rejection letter. I'm really starting to love these things, actually, and I'm far beyond expecting a positive response! The first word I see through my rips at the envelope is 'Sorry!' Heh heh. I love it. Now THAT's rejection! But I was not jaded enough to bear what followed!

The letter seemed stuffed with several papers. I quickly skim over the by-the-book rejection letter, which is probably the shoddiest one I have yet seen: badly photocopied onto orange paper - black dots and faded text all over it - and crookedly hand cut from a full piece of paper. Weak. (Note: The scan I made here doesn't do the letter justice - it actually improved the image!) Anyway, I'm more interested to see what else they've included. Here comes the good stuff, folks.

The first thing I pulled out was a nice, third-of-a-page subscription card. It is not unusual, but always tacky, to receive a subscription card with your rejection. This one, however, was remarkably of much nicer quality than the actual rejection - professionally printed on cardstock, even! (See it here) Particularly nice was the large lettering beside the publication's name proudly proclaiming '30 years of award-winning poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction and reviews', as if only to underline the fact that your work was NOT one of these. I also quite like the large 'YES!, start my subscription today' because, now, I'm soooo enthusiastic about subscribing! The little fine print in the corner is quite telltale of Event's priorities, I feel, and makes me chuckle: 'American residents to please pay in US$'. The card also has print on the back listing all the prizes their mag has won...so obviously, I'm way out of their league! But this was only the beginning...

The next sheet, also printed on half a sheet of orange paper, but this time half-decently photocopied was, and I still can't get over this, an advertisement for Event's (and I quote) 'Reading Service for Writers'!!!! Ha ha ha! That's CRAZY! You have to see it to believe it! Basically, now that my work has been rejected by them, they want me to resubmit it and pay them $100 to tell me what's wrong with my story!!! Oh my god!! It's so demented it's hilarious. I couldn't make this shit up, folks. I'll quote the second paragraph:

Every year Event receives hundreds of manuscripts. Many are good, but since we can't publish them all, we send many of them back, sometimes with a brief note, sometimes with only a stock reject form. Now we have an option for the writer who wants more from us.

Oh my god. I can't even begin to stop laughing at the twisted logic behind this. I'd sarcastically paraphrase the gist of this logic but, honestly, I've tried and I can't do it. This letter is so cynical it is beyond sarcasm! When sarcasm has lost it's sting...that's a sad, sad day, my friends. I also love how they say for the 'nominal fee of $100'. $100!! Nominal? The plea for US residents and overseas writers to 'please' pay in US funds comes up again. But the back of the 'Reading Service for Writers' is the best part. Here they try to convince us why our friends and writers groups are not adequate in judging the value of a story in a sad play to meritocracy and elitism. I especially love how all these testimonials come from annonymous, unnamed authors. Too damned funny. But this is not the end of the story. Yes! There's more.

After shaking my head at this, I checked out the last sheet (3 out of 4 sheets in this rejection package were non rejection related, for those of you keeping track). On a full 8.5 x 11, mildly orange piece of paper, laser printed, not poorly photocopied, is an announcement of Event's Creative Non-Fiction Contest #17! where I can shell out 25$ to have my story judged AGAIN by them! Oh, and American and overseas entrants, (everybody now!) please pay in US dollars! HA hah hah hah hah... man, I can't get over that please. Such a polite money grab. Almost sounds as if it's just a suggestion.

My Rebuttal: I'm sorry, but the only way to rebuttle this is to mimick it. I mean, there is nothing I can say that this rejection package doesn't already say for itself! So here you go: My own Event Subscription card Redidified! If I get, say, 15 emails from separate people daring me to print this out and mail this to Event, I will.