Stranger Things Have Happened

A very strange thing happen this summer. The two letters that are pictured here were returned to me as undeliverable. The part that makes this unusual is that the letters were sent in 1983. Can you see the postmark and the 20 cent stamps? That means they were sent 28 years ago, yet only returned to me this past June. I opened them up and discovered that the first letter was one I had written to an editor, asking if she might be interested in an article I was writing. The second letter was a follow up, asking if she had received the first letter. Obviously, my writing was never published in that magazine. Even though the editor never received my query, I'm sure that receiving no response felt like a rejection to me.

I learned early that one has to have a thick skin when trying to publish. Often a writer will receive rejection after rejection with no reasons given. Frankly, I always thought it was easier on my ego to be rejected by editors who I never met--and it's rare that a writer ever meets the editors since most everything is accomplished through correspondence.