The Rejection

So, I’m sure you’ve heard by now. I submitted two short stories to the Edinburgh Flash Fiction Awards competition and received an email this week notifying me that they were both unsuccessful. I do feel like I was naively optimistic that I would potentially make the shortlist or long list, whatever the hell it is, but that’s the whole point of entering the thing in the first place. It is a bit disheartening because I genuinely think they're both nice, little stories. With all of the hobbies that I take part in, the hardest part with any of them is finishing a project to completion and these two stories were anomalies in that dataset. This competition forced me to do that and the low word count felt very restrictive but also made it easy to make sure every sentence and every single word was there for a reason and served a purpose. This was something that I’d never tried doing with the millions of unfinished stories I have on my Google Drive.

I'm probably going to put the stories on here, where no one will read them, and that’s ok. Those stories aren’t so much about the process of reading them, but the process of writing them. Also it cost me £10 per submission for that competition which means I had to pay someone £10 to read my story which isn’t really financially viable for me, personally, moving forward. That said, I think me not charging the reader to read it but also me not paying the reader to read it is a fair deal so the blog is a good location for them.

I can’t specifically remember the last time I had a rejection email. I’ve never really done conventional job interviews, I’ve been lucky enough to only have informal ones or just been in the right place at the right time. Maybe I've just seen the process enough from the outside; you open the email and if there isn’t any immediate congratulations you quickly scan through until you see the word ‘unfortunately’. That pretty much sums up the entirety of the email in one word. They have to do the obligatory consolation paragraph to tell us that this shouldn’t be a setback but should be motivation to write more and do better.

I get that, and I think they’re probably right but it also took the wind out of my very fragile sails for a while. I'm struggling to get back into doing anything at the moment so I’ve decided that the only way I can motivate myself to do more writing is to do it out of spite. If they think my writing isn’t good then:

1. They're absolutely right, 

2. I'm going to fill up the entire internet with amateur, poorly formatted, uninteresting, nonsensical shit that only I will read anyway.

I may enter more competitions in the future; they were kind enough to tell me that the submissions for the competition open on 1st May next year so I’ve time to think about it. But I may have other options. I’d barely even closed the email app and started to put my phone back in my pocket when I heard the email notification again. Confused, I looked back in the email app and there it was; another email. 

Sitting there at the top of the list, just above the ones from the Scottish Arts Trust because I don't delete emails no matter how hurtful they are, is an email from the SBRD. I open it and it said this:

Dear Beaumont Storm,

It has been brought to our attention that you recently submitted two pieces of fiction to the Scottish Arts Trust to be considered for their Flash Fiction Award and that you, even more recently, received notification that your stories were not necessarily shit but more shit than the rest of the submissions they had received. This is not good news if you were hoping to do better than that in their competition but it could also be seen as wonderful news if you were hoping to become a part of the SBRD.

We have long been proponents of the belief that no matter how shit something or someone is, they deserve the freedom to be shit or produce shit things, as much as something that isn’t shit or someone that doesn’t produce shit, has the freedom to be not shit or produce not shit things. It is this open-minded approach to unskilled people and low quality content that has drawn us so naturally in your direction.

Over the past two hundred years we have built an entire institution around facilitating the needs of creators from mediocre, to consistently disappointing despite us knowing about them, all the way to downright sad. We feel like you can fit very comfortably in at least one of our many categories and we’d love to welcome you with big, friendly, Scottish, open arms. 

If anything in this email is of interest to you please do reach out to us and we’ll see what we can arrange to take this to the next step.

Kindest Regards,

Malcolm McBoogan

Scottish Board of Rejection and Disappointment

P.S. We noticed that you had two submissions for the competition, both of which were rejected equally. This helps prove our point even more, btw,  but our budget is significantly less than the Scottish Arts Trust so this one email from us covers both submissions.

Needless to say, I was both hurt and intrigued. So I decided to send them a reply. I told them a little bit about myself and asked what kind of services they provided and within a couple of days I had received an invitation to visit their headquarters in Edinburgh. I was surprised to say the least but I was so desperate for any kind of approval or validation I booked the most budget-friendly train I could find for the next day using £18 of my own money and the coupon code they had provided and packed my suitcase for a trip to Scotland.

When the train pulled into the station I tried to get an Uber to the address they had provided but the app said that the request could not be processed. I found this more frustrating than disappointing but I was still let down with my expectations of relative convenience so I’ll give them that one. I walked for a while until it dawned on me that other taxi companies exist in the world. I phoned the first one I found and was able to get a taxi but I was slightly confused when he started driving me back into the city, eventually  dropping me off outside a Starbucks insisting that's the address I'd given him. Again, this was more frustrating than disappointing but when I looked at the address it did appear to be the one for the Starbucks. The only difference being that Starbucks was ‘142’ and my email said ‘142b’. 

I walked down the alley next to it, squeezed between the bins and found a dark blue, wooden door with a small, rusted sign above it stating: ‘SBRD’. I pressed the door bell and waited at least a minute with no reply. Assuming the doorbell wasn’t working, I knocked firmly and the door was answered in no more than 4 seconds.

Behind the door was a small, old woman with white hair. She asked my name and said they had been expecting me. She welcomed me in and I followed her down a flight of stairs into what was undeniably one half of the Starbucks’ cellar. She offered me a drink while I waited in the reception room and I was soon joined by a short, balding man wearing a dark brown suit at least one size too big for him. 

He introduced himself as Malcolm McBoogan and invited me with his thick Scottish accent into his very small office which appeared to be the only other room. I obliged and took my lukewarm coffee with me. I had the forethought to take my Dictaphone with me so I am able to provide an exact transcript of the brief, cramped meeting. It was as follows:

Malcolm: Any of those chairs there are fine, sir.

Me: There’s only one chair.

Malcolm: I’d choose that one if I were you, then.

Me: You’ve got a lovely office.

Malcolm: Aye, well, it’s better than a rabid fox up yer kilt when you’re shitting in the forest at 4 in the morning.

Me: [Silence]

Malcolm: Anyway, Welcome to the Scottish Board of Rejection and Disappointment. We’re happy to welcome you here to see how we might be able to work together in ways that might be beneficial to both parties.

Me: Are we talking about financial benefits?

Malcolm: Well, for the services we think you could provide for us the financial arrangements can be somewhat unconventional for the provision of services but we’ll get to that in due course. Our establishment is built upon the counterpoint to the Scottish Arts Trust. They seek to exhibit and empower the best art and artists in Scotland and beyond while simultaneously undertaking a campaign of pretension to gatekeep the art world and ensure the unskilled chancers stay out by destroying the dreams and ambitions of innocent, naive, misguided amateurs that think they can be part of the art world even though their work isn’t good enough.

Me: is that—

Malcolm: You! It is you! You’re the exact perfect mix that we look for. You’re naive enough to think that your work would ever be considered, despite it not being remotely close to the standard of even the worst submissions that they expect to get. But your work is also of such low quality that we’re confident any submission you ever make to reputable competitions is guaranteed to be rejected. 

This gives us the opportunity for a consistent and reliable source of disappointment because you’ll keep trying despite getting the same results every time and you’ll have your misplaced optimism to keep you trying even though it will always end the same way. 

Me: [Crestfallen]

Malcolm: Aye, but that’s where we come in. We can offer people like you an alternative to being successful. As an institution we get funding based on the disappointment and rejection of aspiring artists of all kinds. We work in conjunction with many different arts trusts all over the country to find people, like you, that we can work with. We help you find different ways to set yourself up for disappointment then everytime you succeed in failing we fill out a form, submit it to the board, they compile them all throughout the year then at the end they’re audited, we get our funding and you earn a small commission based on the help you've provided us.

Me: What if I win one though?

Malcolm: That’s the spirit that's gonna make us a lot of money together, Lad! Irene out in reception can get you the application form but at this point it’s just a formality, you're an absolutely perfect fit for the job.

Me: How much is the commission?

Malcolm: Let’s just say it’ll cover your train fare home and that £20 you paid the Scottish Arts Trust to read those 250 word skid marks you sent them.

Me: [goes to see Irene]

Following my appointment I filled out the form with Irene and made my way home. I've not entered any more competitions as of yet but it's still early days.