13 Reasons You Really Didn’t See Coming for Why Your Short Story Was Rejected

By R.L. Maizes

1. The story is about a talking mongoose, and the magazine recently ran a piece about a talking mongoose.
2. The story doesn’t fit the issue’s theme, Patriotism and Walnuts.
3. Almonds are not walnuts.
4. The lilies in the story remind the editor of the flower arrangements at Nana’s funeral.
5. The story isn’t written in emojis.
6. The story isn’t written as a flow chart.
7. Your submission fee was forwarded to a GoFundMe for the marketing intern’s chin augmentation.
8. You spelled the editor’s name right but not the way he wishes it were spelled.
9. The story isn’t about a talking mongoose.
10. The last time the editor accepted a piece in Helvetica her hoverboard caught fire.
11. Semicolons give the editor a rash.
12. The editor hasn’t gotten over last night’s episode of This Is Us.
13. An agent rejected the editor’s novel about a talking mongoose and who the hell do you think you are anyway?

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R.L. Maizes‘ short story collection, We Love Anderson Cooper, is forthcoming in July from Celadon Books/Macmillan. Her stories have aired on National Public Radio and have appeared in the literary magazines Electric Literature, Witness, Bellevue Literary Review, Slice, and Blackbird, among others. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Lilith, and elsewhere. She was born and raised in Queens, New York, and now lives in Boulder, CO, with her husband, Steve, and her muses: Arie, a cat who was dropped in the animal shelter’s night box like an overdue library book, and Rosie, a dog who spent her first year homeless in South Dakota and thinks Colorado is downright balmy. Find her on Twitter: @RL_Maizes