I got a highly unusual rejection letter the other day.  It wasn’t personal or anything.  It was a very standard, sorry, but thank you for trying type letter.  So standard, it didn’t even say Dear Gabrielle Olexa or mention the story I’d written.  So standard, it was only one sentence long.  That was expected, though, so I wasn’t too bummed about the whole ordeal – rejection letters are an odd source of nourishment for writers.  What made it unusual was that everyone else who had been considered and rejected were also included, instead of being blind copied like they should have been.  I got a second email not long after apologizing for the novice mistake.  For a very skinny minute, I thought about sending an email to each writer and telling them that I felt their pain and wishing them luck in their future endeavors, but once I realized how ridiculous that would be, I just moved the email into my growing rejection folder and moved on with my life.

The rejection letter was from the magazine Word and Images and it went like this:

Rejection Letter #3 – Word and Images

We thank you for submitting your piece to Words and Images but we regret to inform you it has not been selected for printing in the 2013 issue.
Sincerely,
The staff of Words and Images