Accepted by Laura J. Oliver

The writing center where I teach workshops has instituted a really cool new policy (not) to see if you’re living up to their expectations.

Anonymous evaluations.

I understand (not really) the value of this. (Mean) people feel free to say anything they want to say, while regular people put their names on their forms. Fortunately, I’m too mature (hahaha) for this to affect me.

Case in point, after reading my first group of evaluations, I immediately texted my closest colleague to ask how she feels about the new policy. (This was in fact, code for, “Has anyone criticized you for a stellar workshop?”)

And she said, “Frustrated.”

Which I interpreted as, “There’s always one.”

And then my colleague and I text laughed. Because in a stack of positive reviews, we both obsess over the one person who wanted something different. And because this has been our experience with writers when we suggest a minor change that might make a fabulous story just a bit more publishable. Time and again, we have seen the writer dismiss a 6-page summary concluding, “best manuscript I’ve read this year,” to hear only, “let’s tweak the first paragraph,” and run off a cliff with it.

“We’re just like them!” we say. Which of course we have always known, but we have now been reminded of the fragility of the human heart in a visceral way and of how easy it is for suggestions to sound like criticism and for criticism to feel like rejection.

Of course, we all have to face rejection in one form or another. Patients get second opinions and choose one surgeon over another. Electricians give estimates, and someone else gets the job. Not every person you’d date online wants to date you. But writers have to face being passed over quite literally every day. And because what is being rejected is an expression of our deepest thoughts, feelings, fears and basic wonderments, it cuts more deeply than, say, choosing a Volvo over an Audi.

There are rejections that are so beautifully written, so intimately accurate, that it’s a full half a day before you figure out you should be depressed; they aren’t actually taking your story. Then there are these.

My mother, who was an aspiring writer as a young woman, once received the following rejection letter.

Dear Contributor,

Thank you for sending us the six pieces of paper. Unfortunately, somebody wrote all over them.

The rejection was a prank from my father, a witty if not necessarily empathetic man.

But the worst rejection I ever received was from the University of Iowa and it was very real.

In September of 2000, I submitted a short story to the Iowa Review with a cover letter in which I succinctly documented my reasons for sending the piece to this particular journal, my education, and publishing history. A story is a part of you, like one of your children—your stories carry your DNA and even look a bit like you.

So the submission was quite personal, like sitting on the crinkly white paper of a doctor’s examination table, partially clothed, explaining quite a bit about yourself and a vulnerability you’ve discovered that you’d like to explore together. Getting a response is like that moment when the doctor leans in and presses a stethoscope to your heart. Enough of your explaining. Let him listen for a minute. He’ll be the judge.

I pulled the letter with the Iowa Review return address from the mailbox, and

held my breath. The envelope contained the first page of my story, which had been ripped from the manuscript and sent back to me like proof of life. Stapled to it was an untitled and unsigned poem printed on Iowa Review stationery. The poem read:

This is just to say

We have taken some plums

We found in our mail box.

You were hoping they would be

Yours. Forgive us

Others seemed

Sweeter

Or colder

More bold

Or whatever.

That was it. A corrupted version of a William Carlos Williams poem. I was actually shocked. It felt smug, juvenile, profoundly personal, and it hurt exceptionally.

Of course, I had been hoping they’d take my plum! I’d just spent $25,000 learning to make plums in an MFA program at Bennington. I had plums to share.

But they found a colder plum in the mailbox? Does that even make sense? A more bold plum?

Whatever?

I wanted to write back, “Have you even graduated from middle school? What are you, ten?”

The thing about rejection, the thing about love, about life, is learning to separate yourself from the judgment of others. This is easier if you are a car mechanic, I suspect, than an artist, but maybe not. We are all human, and I think holding steady at the core is a challenge across the board. (If this doesn’t apply to you, I’m truly in awe. Call home immediately. Thank your parents.)

A therapist I learned a great deal from once said to me, “Your worth is your protection.”

But if you don’t leave home with it, where does worth come from?

I think it comes from knowing you’re a unique story in the book of everything good, and although you don’t need my evaluation, I am going on the record here and now.

No need to be sweeter, colder, or bolder. You, dear reader, are the perfect plum.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.