More Ableist Rejection Horror Stories!

[Edit 2023: I believe in transparency and that we’re all learning. To that end, I try to update my old blog posts with more context when I become aware of people apologizing. In 2022, after other disabled authors asked me which journal sent me this rejection years earlier, I publicly Tweeted that it was the Bellevue Literary Review. After that, the editor-in-chief, Danielle Ofri, emailed me an apology. I’m glad they’re receptive to feedback and trying to respond to submitters sensitively.]

Note: Irony strikes again! I wrote this for Submittable’s Rejection Horror Stories feature, and it was rejected. Polite rejections like theirs don’t bother me, though. My essay is below. CN for ableism and sexual assault mention:

In late 2017, I made some major life and career changes. So, I finally had much more time to write than I’d had in years. In my first attempt at writing fiction in ages, I explored sexual trauma that I’d experienced between 2014 and 2016. Writing about trauma can be cathartic, even therapeutic, but sharing it can feel nerve-wracking. That’s how I felt submitting this story — which means that I probably wasn’t ready to submit it yet.

Weeks later, on a Saturday night near New Year’s, I received a rejection email for that story from one of my dream literary journals. The anonymous readers or editors phrased their criticism tactlessly, I thought, calling a first-person, short story about trauma “one-sided.” The final line of the rejection stunned me: “A disabled woman with PTSD from sexual assault is cliché.”

Like my protagonist, I literally was “a disabled woman with PTSD from sexual assault.” However, whether or not I disclose that, I expect more professionalism and respect from editors. I had even put a trigger warning on my submission, a common courtesy when writing about trauma. I knew that real people with emotions would read my submission. I wish they’d remembered that on their side and treated me accordingly.

PTSD has many common symptoms, and it’s possible to fictionalize them in ways that someone might find cliché. Not all stories are ready to publish, obviously, but that’s not what the editors said. It’s possible to offer constructive criticism without dismissing a writer’s experiences or marginalized identity. One need not assume that the story is autobiographical to allow that the author might be a disabled sexual assault survivor. The editors considered a disabled woman a cliched character, but apparently not a possible author.

By then, I was accustomed to rejections, but not to ones that I found invalidating or insensitive. Stories and essays that I wrote in college started getting published and taught in college classes, five to ten years after I wrote them. This is partly because there are more publications by and for disabled writers now than when I graduated from college in 2011.

Before I started getting published, I received other ableist rejections. Some editors ignorantly viewed disability as a niche or fad. One even called my characters’ disabilities “their afflictions.” However, this was by far the most unprofessional rejection I’ve ever received. Having my identity called cliché was particularly galling because disabled writers’ stories are finally getting mainstream attention. In an ironic form of gatekeeping, to some editors, I’d skipped directly from being too unusual to being an overdone trope. Non-disabled writers have often written disabled sexual assault victims in ignorant ways, but something isn’t suddenly a cliché once marginalized writers try to tell their own stories.

That story rejection was a reminder of how not to treat people, either in personal or professional settings. A thoughtless response to describing trauma can be harmful and triggering. Editors shouldn’t make comments like this with impunity, expecting that no one else but the writer will ever find out about them.

This incident also helped me reevaluate my own boundaries in my writing. I still find the full rejection email too upsetting to reread or include here. I decided not to include specific details of trauma, either real or fictional, in my writing. If something makes me uncomfortable to write or submit, I’m probably not ready to publish it. I learned to give myself more distance between my life and my fiction, both in subject matter and by allowing more time before trying to fictionalize memories. I still feel enraged describing this rejection two years later. Publishing my original story, sharing the full email, or replying to it, are lines I wouldn’t cross.