UFR Weekly Newsletter #18: What You Might Find

[David Cotrone]

If your work has been turned down that doesn’t mean we didn’t like it. Our rejection letters say, “this just wasn’t what we were looking for,” and that’s true. It doesn’t mean your writing wouldn’t fit into the beautiful amalgam of another magazine. It doesn’t mean we don’t want you to submit again. It doesn’t mean we think you’re a bad writer, whatever that actually means. So often we ask ourselves what makes us qualified to accept or reject work, and we always come to the same answer: we’re not. We don’t have anything you don’t already have.

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Two stories by Adam Reger

Stella Marr talks about her experiences as a prostitute, her times of pain and her moments of healing, saying, “We knew the violence had taken something from us and changed the way we fit into the world, turned us into hookers, into women on the outside looking in. It splintered us to pieces. It’s in the spaces between those pieces where life billows through you. Where you learn to feel how other people are feeling. Where you find hope like mica stones at the bottom of dark water.”

From the archives: Two stories by Kim Chinquee

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We were talking about movies, about what we would make if we were good enough. I said I thought “Time to Move On” would be great in one, the camera starting in close before zooming out. In the movie, the character might be sitting on a bench, realizing the size of the world, his head resting on his hands. Or she might be standing in a city, her arms stretched out like wings. Or maybe the two would be together in a car, driving toward some distance, a small crack in the windshield and the wind blowing through. It could be the opening scene or the closing. It could be neither. It could be something else. It’s up to you.

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My own writing has been rejected more than it will ever be accepted, and I’m okay with that. If you keep putting yourself out there someone will eventually reach out to meet you. Write every day without fear of what you might find. Give yourself that much.

Be well,

David