Akshay Gajria - Reject

 

I'm obsessed with organizing my inboxes. There's one folder that I have which is tagged green, which I keep at the very bottom of my inbox, so that it's just hidden and out of sight. It's called Rejections, and it contains all the rejection letters that I've received from all the years of writing stories and trying to get them published. I've submitted to all the magazines that you can think of, from Granta, Glimmer, Train, Shimmer. You name a magazine, I've got a rejection from them. [audience laughter] 

 

Every rejection that comes your way, it feels like it's a sting. It's almost like the words are saying, “You're not ready. Stop pretending to be a writer.” And the worst one is, “Your work is really worthless.” That's not what they say, but that's what it feels like. [audience laughter] But through some twist of fate, I became an editor for a magazine. I had posted a photo on Twitter about editing my story with green ink. And one of my editor friends, who had published a small piece of mine online, he said, "Hey, do you want to be an editor for the magazine?" I was like, "Yes, definitely." And I got in. 

 

Initially, I just started to subtly correct a few typos here and there, leave a small suggestion, "Hey, this word could be changed around," maybe correct a little bit of the grammar. But I didn't do much. But my editor, Srinath, he had a master plan in mind. He's an engineer. He is Indian. He is going bald. We had everything in common. [audience laughter] So, we became really good friends. And he's like, "Hey, I want to take a backseat from this. Do you want to take over?" Suddenly, I had the role of accepting and rejecting stories. Like Spider-Man said, "With great power comes great responsibility." [audience laughter]

 

nitially, I was hesitant to reject stories. I accepted most of them. I was very happy to read all the stories. Most of them were really good. But then, one day, this one story came in that-- The grammar was all over the place. The language was just not good. While I was reading it, I kept stumbling over the words. The story was very nascent. It wasn’t eked out yet. I had to reject this piece, but I couldn’t. I just didn’t send out the rejection email. 

 

10 days, it sat in my inbox and then later, I was just like, "Okay, I need to write this email." And I started: "Hi. The story you've written is crap" backspace. [audience laughter] "Hi, this is not up to our standards." No, this doesn’t feel right. I left it again and I just didn’t look at the email for a while, until the writer followed up with me saying, "Hey, what happened to my story?" 

 

I picked up one of the rejections that I had received, copy, paste, send. [audience laughter] It crushed me. I had taken the hopes of one writer and thrown them down the drain. I knew how that felt like. How could I do this? And then, one more piece came in that had to be rejected. Another copy, paste, another send, another sinking feeling in my stomach. I confessed to my friend Alicia. She's kind and wise. 

 

I told her, "This is too hard. I can't reject stories like this. I know how it feels." She said, "Look at all the rejections that you have received. You work hard on your stories because of those rejections, those conversations that you have with yourself, thinking you're having a conversation with the editor to convince that, 'Hey, your story is really good' has helped you. What you're doing by sending them rejections is helping them. And you’re playing a very small but significant part in their journey." 

 

I agreed with her. That's when I started writing those emails myself. I tried to not just read the story, but go into the depth of it, understand what the writer was trying to say, leave a line. One line of criticism with one line of encouragement. I distilled all the hope and encouragement I could into those emails and sent them out. 

 

That's when I started reading my own rejections. And suddenly, I realized all the editors on the other side have been distilling all their hope and encouragement in them. And now, when I look at that entire folder of rejections that I have, I don't think of them as something as people saying that I'm worthless. It's just a band of cheerleaders cheering me on. Thank you.