Lately, I know that the New York Times has rejected an op-ed piece of mine because the manuscript comes back to me unaccompanied by a rejection slip, in an envelope with a New York postmark. When there is no postmark, I'm left guessing; the Times is not the only publication to have picked up this habit. Oh well, just words, nothing that need be treated with respect. Funny to find oneself all but yearning for a return to the "civility" of a rejection form.

I write this, of course, within sight of multiple stacks of manuscripts and correspondence to which I have been insufficiently attentive, or about which I have been grossly inefficient. So this is as much self-criticism as it is a self-pitying or self-righteous screed. Of course, I have a somewhat smaller staff and budget than the New York Times. . . but let me not digress.

It has taken us a year to put together our second issue a lack of funding, of course, rather than manuscripts. We have, in that period, had more than a thousand submissions. As working writers and editors, we are acutely aware of the pain not merely of rejection but the agony that attends waiting. Nothing would please us more than to be able to render quick decisions. For whatever it's worth, we do tend to reject faster than we accept; if we're holding onto work, it's usually because it's receiving closer scrutiny.

In addition to putting our financial house in order, we are getting more procedurally adept, a process that we expect will be ongoing. In the meantime, for both our readers and our contributors, we hope that our inefficiency will not be taken for indifference. We do care deeply about words, it's just that sometimes for better and for worse we're overwhelmed by them.

Donald N.S. Unger

November 1997

Essays