APP: Glamour Rejects Me

Glamour Rejects Me

A Review by Jessi

As most of you know by now, I am actively pursuing a career as a writer, while also trying to become an actress, rock star, model and chef. Just as a little background, I have seven short stories in my file, a novel, some editorials and a 3,000 word article about theatre.

I sent the last article to several magazines, one of which, was everyone's favorite…GLAMOUR - The Magazine That Lets You Know You're Out Of Style. Just last week, I received my rejection letter from Glamour, and I'd like to review it here.

First of all, it wasn't even a letter, it was a little cream colored postcard in a tiny, hand addressed envelope. For a brief moment, I thought it was a Christmas card, or an invitation to a party, but then, upon opening, I saw the words…

DEAR WRITER:

This is my favorite part. I'm sitting here, in a tiny little office, armed only with a simple program like Microsoft Word, and yet, here, in the pull down menu TOOLS, I see the term MAIL MERGE. Is my writing SO bad that you can't even bring yourself to enter my name into a field? You had to write out my address on the envelope by hand…that didn't seem to be too much work. I don't get it. Every single rejection letter I have ever received used my name in the greeting. EVERY ONE, except Glamour.

Thank you for your submission to our magazine. We will review your story/article/editorial to see if it fits our current needs.

Again, thanks for the triple slash, all encompassing brush off, which shows that you didn't even LOOK at what I sent you…just threw it in a pile for a model to sit on.

We receive thousands of manuscripts and simply cannot review all of them in a timely manner.

DON'T GIVE ME YOUR PROBLEMS. It must be rough to have the supreme power to crush the freelance writer on a daily basis. Take your thousands of manuscripts and cram 'em.

Sincerely, The Editors Of Glamour

Nice. How hard did they all start laughing when they typed SINCERELY? I mean, you might as well type…I'LL CALL YOU. Why couldn't the person who was chained up in the basement, hand addressing these envelopes just sign some fake name, just to humor me?*

This letter left me with the feeling that the Glamour Castle has a big stack of these pre-printed postcards and two little intern slaves addressing envelopes every day, eight hours a day. When a manuscript comes in, they simply send it through the shredder if it's not about lipstick, and pop a postcard in the mail.

Now listen, I'm a reasonable person…I understand that these people are busy. And in no way am I implying that I wanted these people to send me a letter written in India Ink, describing at length how my article wasn't suitable. I know that rejection letters are cold, evil things…but this Glamour one was the absolute worst. I've been rejected from about seven magazines thus far (which, they tell me, is normal), and none of them treated me as mechanically as Glamour. Kudos to Glimmertrain, Confrontation, and several university based Journals. Their rejections not only used my name, but mentioned the titles of my stories and gave a few words of encouragement for future endeavors. Now THAT's a rejection I can stand.

*By the way, as any good writer knows, you always send an SASE with you manuscript, so this poor intern didn't even HAVE to address an envelope. That's how evil the editors at Glamour are.

LET ME SAY THIS ABOUT THAT - HOME