Monday, October 17, 2011

The Especially Kind Rejection

"Hello Krystal

Thank you for submitting your work to the ____ exhibition at ____ University. Unfortunately, your work was not selected for the exhibition.

We wish you well in your artistic endeavors and encourage you to apply again next year.

Thank you for introducing us to your work.

Sincerely,

________
Director, Art Gallery
_______ University"
I have to admit, out of all of the rejection letters I have recieved, this one was the most enjoyable.  It has a polite and kind tone to it...and at least it is addressed to me. 
Yes, I have recieved rejection letters for other people, but with my name on the envelope.  I was puzzled if I should find a way of contacting them to let them know the bad news and revel in our rejection together.  teehee  Is there an ethical way to go about that or some code of conduct?

"Hello, is this Sally Jo Bob?  This is Krystal Booth and I'm calling to let you know that you have been rejected by the such and such gallery for an exhibition.  I was too.  You may or may not know that already depending upon the letter you recieved.  Shall we meet for ice cream?"

2 comments:

Jan Priddy, Oregon said...

You made me smile.

I think gallery owners must be swapping form letters with literary journals. Some of them allow the journal in insert name and title... but in other ways they are identical to the one most receive.

Once I received a rejection letter with my name handwritten and a further paragraph. "This is a form letter, but not the one we send out to everyone. You are urged to resubmit." I liked that one. I did. I got the ordinary form letter next. big big sigh!

Krystal Booth said...

Jan,

You made ME smile! Yes, the ordinary form letters seem like a big slam at times...especially after a handwritten rejection. A handwritten rejection is the equivalent of gold! I have not received the "gold" version of rejection yet, but I'm looking forward to it!

The form letters can be entertaining. It's fun to see how they have managed to use extremely general, careful, and polite language to say "No, your work was not good enough" or "Your work was too different from our curatorial goal" or "We scratched out our eyes". I regret not keeping all of them from this year. We'd have some laughs! Thank you so much for your response, Jan!

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