I saw someone online making erasure poems out of their query rejections and thought it might be fun. I love erasure poems, but maybe “fun” is the wrong word here — too much bitterness and dejection at play. I’ve not queried in a long, long while.
Note: there are four versions of a single rejection below. The fourth version is pretty much the gist of letter — in other words not done in the true spirit of erasure poems which seek to pervert the original meaning or discover some other meaning. I include it anyway.
Speaking of one of my detailed and well-imagined characters (Eliza Lucas Pinckney), here are a few erasure poems based on a single letter to her father.
Pared down, perhaps feels even more brutal. Not for the faint of heart. I could not do, either the sending of query letters or the rejections becoming poems…or the writing itself for that matter.
Good on you for your creativity, your grit and nerves of steel.
Much Love
Maybe it is harsher absent the qualifying praise.
I hoped that this exercise helped you process this in a more positive way. One of the reasons I admire writers so much is that I could NEVER go through the gauntlet of submission and rejection.
Well if nothing else, the exercise reminds me of how thoroughly I’ve dropped the ball in recent months.
Playing around with all of this to give you a reversed erasure pre- acceptance letter:
Dear Dee,
Your patience clearly elicits reactions and admiration for your story..It’s detailed and very well written and your fine people, real and imagined, are champion. Thank you for your extensive research, The voice is right and I hope you will move toward letting us work with you in the hope of getting your novel published.
Sincerely,
Marti W. from the offices of PORWB”
aka, Publishes of Real Worthy Books
This was great! Thank you Marti.
What a cool idea .. turning rejection into poetry is genius!!
An entertaining distraction anyway!
I did not have the balls to do what you’ve done. I’m considering why you never let the word “but” come to light. Gives me a sense of your resolve.
You got your work out there though which takes tons of resolve and nerve.
Brutal is the word, from my perspective, too. The “erasure” makes me think of the graffiti artist’s paint-out – when they paint over the a wall another artist did and write their own. Very different, really. But, some of the same brutality in reverse? If you could only paint-out the rejections and make them acceptances (as @Marti did nicely.)
Yes if only. The graffiti erasure calls to mind the word: palimpsest
a new word for me! interesting…
I’ll take a rejected author any day, over those who write and immediately run to self-publish. In my experience, they could often use a little rejection! 😉
Especially immediately following NaNoWriMo from what I’ve heard.