Women Who Have Rejected Me

I began writing for pay when I was eighteen years old. And since that time there have been many women who have rejected me. This is not surprising, since many editors are women and it is so easy for women to discover my weaknesses and hurt my feelings.

One of my earliest rejections took place when I was twenty-five years old. I was newly married and had my hands full just trying to please my first wife. This editor calls me and, in a voice that conjures up images of supermodeldom, wonders if I might be interested in writing one of the essays that will be included in an upcoming youth ministry book. Naturally, I swoon, agree to the contract and the meager pay, and set out writing my masterpiece. A few days later I send in the piece, thinking I have written an essay that will change the world. (This was before the real explosion of PCs, when writers had to send material in "over the transom" of the U.S. mail.)

Some weeks later, I receive another call from this same editor telling me that she cannot accept any of my essay as it is, and that I need to re-write it top-to-bottom, and that she needs my rewrites the next day. (What I hear is: "And you call yourself a man?" "Is this your best performance?" "If you are married, your wife must have settled for the bottom rung cause you sure can't ring my bell, honey!")

I do the rewrites in my underwear, thinking a change of scenery might inspire, but gosh darn it if this editor doesn't reject my rewrite too. She ended up writing the essay herself.

I was, to say the least, emasculated.

But I also vowed that I would make it tougher for women to reject me after that. Still, after thirty years of writing, it's still happening on a regular basis. A woman calls, I get all excited and flustered and go out and buy a nice bottle of wine and some fancy cheese bearing a name I cannot pronounce, and then she tells me, "You can't write worth a cowpie!"

My wife, of course, is no comfort. She eats the cheese and drinks my wine and tells me to "get over it." Practicality has no place in a writer's world. I love the dance too much.