Thanks for submitting to Regrettable,
We regret to inform you that your measly $3.00 submission fee is simply not enough. We don’t get out of bed for less than $3,000, so put some zeros on it.
For four zeros, we pledge to get out of our beds and into yours.
Our talented team of trained chimps will give your submission the upmost care. We promise not to throw our feces at it. We’ll keep that promise if you avoid words such as “literally” or “substantially” or, literally, any adverb.
We receive too damn many submissions every month. As writers ourselves, we know we should be specific. How many is too many? More than the number of people who’ve read Conrad, but fewer than the number who’ve read “Fifty Shades of Gray.”
Waiting is hard. We get it. So is wading through thousands of pages of crap.
Did you notice the half-assed resonance of “waiting” and “wading?” This is what happens when you’ve read too many Mary Oliver wannabees.
And should you send us your work again, there is a 99.9% chance you’ll receive another letter crushing your hopes and dreams of being published in our obscure journal. Please take heart. You’re in good company. We’d never publish Stephen King, J.K. Rawling, Brooke Shields, or anyone who writes the stuff Oprah picks for her Book Club.
We are above commerce. That might be why we will be shuttering later this summer.
And if the thought makes you shudder, please keep adding those zeros.
Good luck finding a place for your work.
The Team at Regrettable.
P.S. Since you thought it was a good idea to tell our editor-in-chief what they could do with their “one wild and precious life,” they’re going to let you know what you can do with yours.
Dear Team at Regrettable,
Did you even read my submission? I literally researched your editor-in-chief and learned they are LGBTQ+, a WAZZU grad (Washington State University), and their favorite flavor is tangerine.
The protagonist of my story is a queer writer who goes to a second-rate college and wakes up with a massive hangover after playing a drinking game, “Duck, Duck, Bruce.” They know the only cure is drinking tangerine juice and so go on an epic hero’s journey to find the out-of-season juice in Eastern Washington.
How could your E.I.C. not salivate to publish my story, which is actually their story? Minus tangerines. Citrus doesn’t grow in Eastern Washington in any season. That’s what makes the journey so epic. The hero has to pick through a lot of cherries to find one that tastes remotely like tangerines so they can clone it.
Have you even tasted a cherry from Eastern Washington? Unless you have, you aren’t remotely qualified to pass judgement on my writing.
Insincerely,
The Future Great Writer You’ll Never Have the Privilege of Publishing
Dear Future Great Writer,
Thank you for your note and upbraiding. We do appreciate being schooled by our readers.
The moment we stop learning is the moment we’ll say, “That was the beginning of the end.” As the end is, indeed, nigh, might we offer our own words of wisdom?
Give up writing and take up quidditch. Your chances of success are much better.
The Team at Regrettable
Dear Chimps at Regrettable,
I have informed my writer’s group that you are a bunch of pretentious assholes and under no circumstance to submit their potentially award-winning work to you.
You’ll be sorry when Arthur, who is the best among us, wins a Pulitzer. His poem on the plight of working-class Americans trying to make enough money to buy eggs for egg salad was chosen by our local library to be featured on the side of our new zero impact buses.
Arthur took that vow of silence to never send his work to you. Which he immediately broke to ask, “What’s Regrettable?”
No wonder you are disappearing back into the slough of despond where you belong. If Arthur hasn’t heard of you, then you don’t really exist.
Future Great Writer
P.S. I hope you enjoy the attached story “Don’t Kill the Goose to Get Laid.” It’s about my time as a college student.
Dear Future Great Writer,
We regret to inform you that your work wasn’t chosen for our last, and final, issue.
When we reemerge like glorious cicadas from a 17-year-nap underground, from the heart of darkness and into the light of a new publishing landscape, please don’t contact us.
But if Arthur should choose to do so, we’d welcome the privilege of publishing his work.
The Team at Regrettable, who don’t really regret a damn thing.
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Bliss Goldstein is a cross-genre writer who has been published in HuffPost, the LA Times, CIRQUE Journal, and Funny Pearls. She was CALYX Journal’s 2022 winner of the Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. Her work was also short listed for HerStry’s Eunice William’s Non-fiction Prize, and she’s won two Sue Boynton Poetry Awards. Bliss holds an MLA from Stanford University, where she co-founded the journal Tangents. She’s working on a book of essays “How Not To Be An Asshole.” More bliss@blissgoldstein.com.
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image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 