Not so easy A

Although I devoted my career to newspapers, my college major was actually magazine journalism. The toughest journalism class I took was magazine writing because the professor didn't give A's. Only magazine editors gave A's. To get an A in the class a student had to sell an article to a magazine, then show the acceptance letter or the check to the professor.

A few days ago, in a vain attempt at housecleaning, I happened upon the articles I wrote for that class and the rejection letters I received from magazine editors. Most of the latter were form letters probably sent out by the dozens each day to frustrated writers, although the one from Dick Kaplan, managing editor of Pageant, at least said, "Please forgive this impersonal reply." Henry W. Hough, editor of The Poetry Forum, said, "Sometimes we send back good poems because we're overstocked at the moment." Such phrases seemed somehow reassuring even though they were in form letters and so meant absolutely nothing. Most letters, like those from Redbook, P.S. magazine, the Diners Club Magazine and The Reader's Digest, weren't even signed but just came from "The Editors." Somebody at December Magazine simply wrote the word "SORRY" on a 3-by-5 card

The best rejection letter came from David E. Kucharsky, news editor of Christianity Today, who wrote, "Thank you for letting us see your manuscript on the dormitory Chaplains at Ohio University. It is interesting enough, but I doubt if there is enough significance here on a broad scale. Space pressures are such that we are not able to handle the more local issues." At least I knew that what I had written was actually read by somebody and rejected for a good reason.

As for the other rejected articles, one was called "Saucers, Sea Serpents and Such," another "Edison and the Aeroplane" and another "You Don't Want to Keep This Job You Got," which is what a kindly police chief told me after he picked me up for attempting to sell encyclopedia in his town, in which door-to-door sales turned out to be illegal. I took his advice and quit the job that night.

The rejected poems included the following:

how are you

said one

in greeting

fine thank you

said the other

in suffering

i'm glad to hear that

said the first

in passing

Yet not all my efforts were rejected. On Jan. 12, 1966, Paul Fromer, editor of His, a Christian magazine aimed at college students, wrote, "Thanks for your sensitive article 'The Gift of Shyness.' We want to use it and I am enclosing a check." The article was short, just one page in the magazine, and the check was small, just $7.50, but it was the first money I earned as a journalist and, more importantly, earned me an A just before the semester ended.