Rejection...again!

Today I received my first snail-mail rejection from that query mailing I sent out - was it last week?

Anyway, since writers are always encouraged to send correspondence that is professional in appearance and tone, I was amazed by how blatantly unprofessional this rejection was. Yeah, I've received all kinds of rejections in the past: form letters, postcards, whatever... But this one was different. It looks like a piece of paper off of a note pad - fairly small in size - and it has a basic three-sentence response printed on it, along with the publication's name. Below that, they wrote a quick note in blue colored pencil. It's like a college professor passing out grades marked in crayon, for heaven's sake.

Of course, no matter what the rejection says, us freelance writers really aren't at liberty to speak our minds, lest we inadvertently establish a reputation of being difficult to work with. My recent post on the How-To blog, about writing responses to rejection letters, discusses this in more detail.