Silence

It might not be deadly, but the silent rejection is a particularly frustrating beast to battle.

This past week, while facing intense burnout in the lead-up to an event I was running in London, I decided to look through my live submissions. Consider it an exercise in self-flagellation, a skill I could put on my CV if I were fatalist about my job prospects. I noticed there was a competition whose results were due at the end of January and, ten days into February, decided to check whether the competition had announced its winners anyway.

Of course, I wasn't on the list, and there was no email or notification in my inbox that I had been rejected. I carried on with my day, the knife embedded in my side, wondering why every silent rejection feels so sickening.

If you're a writer with a preponderance of submissions floating around, you've probably created some sort of tracker to keep up with deadlines, requirements, and when you should expect to hear back. Literary agents tend to be transparent about response times, and even gift you with a disclaimer along the lines of, "if you don't hear back in x weeks, we had to pass on you this time." Whereas with journals and competitions, their guidelines might be very clear, with a response time listed just underneath the reading fee, or nonexistent. It's a wonderful crapshoot, and I do sympathize with the independent, underfunded journals trying to put beautiful writing out in the world with little support. Sometimes little details fall to the wayside.

I have spoken to authors who equate a silent rejection to being ghosted by their latest match on Tinder. To some extent, I understand—when you're facing rejection in your career and personal life, it all starts to coalesce. One compounds the other until you're left with the self-esteem of a snowman slowly melting in the winter sun.

However, I have no romantic illusions about submissions. The judges are not my friends (usually), and their priorities are obscure at best. Everyone wants writing that "makes you think", "shatters expectations", "changes the game", "ruffles feathers"; it's eerily similar to the rhetoric of venture capitalists and startup accelerators. But I digress.

To me, the silent rejection is more akin to preparing your most dazzling outfit for a ball, only to arrive at the venue and discover the party date had moved. Someone just forgot to tell you. But there's no material reason to feel downtrodden; you weren't a guest of honor anyway.

Analogies aside, the silent rejection is not very kind to the authors and artists who submit to such opportunities. Nor is it encouraging. The rewards and the prestige may be alluring, but if only a handful of people are given the grace of acknowledgement, these publications are doing a terrible job of encouraging future submissions. It cultivates a population of increasingly disenchanted authors, who have far more dignity than to wait at the door for an offhand pat on the head.