Everything seems so important and so futile.
More times like this will come when you are alone, full of doubt, shedding youth.
Dear Identity Theory Readers,
This has been a grand week on our site. Here’s an Amorak Huey poem we just published:
Read more: “Two Poems by Amorak Huey.”
“More times like this will come when you are alone, full of doubt, shedding youth.”
Hemingway fans among you will dig the essay “Duende” by Daniel Adler. Here’s an excerpt:
An empty Coke bottle, crushed milk carton, partially empty five liter of water, and a fresh-looking single Nike running shoe lay around a tree. You can always tell a place by its trash, the same way a person’s face reflects their fate and a river’s luck is its downfall. Everything in life is arbitrary yet changeable, unfair yet necessary, and the straightest line between two points is the fastest and least interesting. A river declines to the sea. It’s a leveling.
Birds called and I wondered if they had any sense of life having existed for millions of years before them. Then I heard the Guadalquivir again.
“You have seen duende yet you crave more. You forget what you’re made for, what you’ve known and will know. In forgetting you become a mere specialist. You only know when you no longer have to ask, when you carry around in your skin and eyes a knowledge of reality. More times like this will come when you are alone, full of doubt, shedding youth. Remember me and the others, how we will outlast you. If you trust us, you will flow among us.”
Are you really listening to a river talk to you?
Read the rest of “Duende” by Daniel Adler.
The Never-Ending Dream
This week’s cartoon by Alan Michael Parker:
You’ve Been Rejected
This week on Twitter I ranted about rejection letters. I didn’t plan to do this, but a writer called us out on there for having a mean and thoughtless form rejection letter.
I found their displeasure surprising because our form letter is quite cordial. It just says, “This is the worst piece of writing we’ve ever read. Go f—k yourself.”
Who would get upset by that?
No … What our letter actually says is straightforward:
“Thank you for sending us [Title]. We appreciated the chance to read it. Unfortunately, we have decided against publishing this piece.
But we encourage you to press forward with your writing and other great ambitions.
Thanks again for giving us the chance to read your work.”
It’s a patchwork rejection letter. Some of it comes from ancient Submittable defaults, and some of it comes from old letters our editors have used in the past.
It recently said something about how the piece was “not for us,” which I think was the Submittable default, but I changed that after seeing people complain that journals who use that phrase sound condescending. I tried to think of the most straightforward way to say, “We have decided not to publish this,” so basically…that’s what it says.
But this person wrote to complain that the phrase “we decided” is mean and that encouraging them to keep writing is an underhanded, sinister way of saying their writing sucks.
I don’t know. What do you think? Should we say something else?
My least favorite part of our letter is that it says “unfortunately,” because I don’t like attaching judgments to events. Maybe it’s fortunate we decided not to publish it. Who can say? But maybe other parts of the letter can be improved. Feel free to offer suggestions.
Sending rejections is the worst part of running this site. Especially when I (and our other editors) like the writer and/or the piece. I hate sending negative notifications, so I try to keep them simple and straightforward. In all these years, I’ve never felt ill will toward a writer when sending a rejection. It’s never a gleeful experience.
But one thing I’ve learned over the years is that no matter how we tell someone we declined their piece, some small % will take it personally.
And I have to accept that.
Five Dollars Is a Lot of Money
One thing that has happened while running this website over the past 22 years is that I’ve lost heaps of money publishing the words of (mostly) strangers. But I’ve still never charged for submissions, and I’ve kept the promise to keep our contributors’ work online for as long as the site is alive.
I’m going to be losing even more money on the site going forward because I’m upgrading to a new web host and improving some other services related to the site. (Our current host/server is slow and has become increasingly unreliable in recent months, and in fact our site was down for a bit earlier today.)
I don’t mind the personal cost of running the site. It’s still a less expensive hobby than, say, mountain climbing or yacht racing.
But it would be cool, nice, and generally wonderful if you’d like to help defray the costs of putting these words out into the world. You can visit our support page to sign up for a one-time or low monthly donation plan.
($5/month would be awesome TBH.)
For now, it’s just a PayPal link, which is more straightforward than having you jump through hoops to do a paid subscription to this newsletter. And it’s not tax deductible. You’re literally just sending me money and I’m sending it to someone else, whether it’s our web host or a donut shop to treat our writers.
Do it or don’t do it. There is no try. (Actually, trying would still feel nice.)
And Now for the Usual Spiel
Eat your Wheaties!
Drink your Ovaltine!
Dream big and with duende,
Matt Borondy (and Iroh the Paw-Licking Corgi)
Identity Theory