If you have email (Hey, hi! If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here), then you are receiving newsletters. You’re getting them from nonprofits you have donated to, companies you have engaged with, maybe even podcasts you listen to. Newsletters are part of the push to increase social media engagement, and if you’ve tried to make this happen for yourself, someone has probably told you to start a newsletter.
If you’re a writer who submits to journals, then you’re probably receiving newsletters from them, too. You may have had the unfortunate experience of seeing the name of a journal that you’ve submitted to appear in your inbox and think, “Hurrah! Today is my day! My long-hoped-for acceptance!” only to find a newsletter from the journal informing you about the latest issue, that you’re not in.
My decision to receive journals’ newsletters was very intentional. I’ll skip the excuses and confess the true, shallow reason: I want the journals to like me, and I thought they might if I signed up. (I can feel your psychoanalysis of this, and trust me, I know what you’re thinking.) But when I heard nothing from these journals on the status of my submission, the regular clunking of their newsletters into my inbox began to annoy me — the expectation of an acceptance or rejection from them, followed by the disappointment of a generic newsletter — and worse, when I received three or more rejections from the same journal, the newsletters made me feel like the little sister who was watching her big siblings ditch her to play by themselves.
Yet part of me still thought that if the editors saw my name on the newsletter list, they would decide my writing was good enough to be included in their journal. (Again, I know how this sounds, and I cop to my ignorance here. I have no idea whether editors know who is on the newsletter list or if they care at all). All part of the yearning to be included, the teacher’s pet instinct that I have yet to shed.
On Twitter recently, someone (I wish I remember who, but can’t find the tweet) tweeted about unsubscribing from journals’ newsletters. You don’t have to feel obligated to receive them, they wrote. It won’t make a difference to your chances of having a piece accepted. It’s very freeing, they wrote. This tweet made me feel seen, as they say, and empowered. And because I’m an all-or-nothing person, I thought: I shall unsubscribe from all of them! No more pulse-quickening at the sight of an email from a journal! Now, if I got one, I would know: it’s a yes, or no, not a “check out our latest contest!”
This week, when The West Trestle Review’s name popped into my inbox, I thought they would be the first to go. They have rejected three of my pieces, two of which have gone on to be published in other journals, which might mean that my writing is not for them. Fine and dandy. Unsubscribe. But as I scrolled down to the infamous “unsubscribe” button, I began to read the note from Patricia Caspars, the Editor in Chief. In it, she contextualized the all but certainty of the end of Constitutionally-protected reproductive rights through a personal story about her abortion. It was gorgeous, and hard, and engaging, and it made me cry. Suddenly, I got the point of newsletters, and, shocker, it’s not about me. It’s about the editors of the journals to which I submit. They are, without exception, excellent, compassionate writers themselves, and sometimes, they write pieces like Patricia Caspers did, and I would not have read that piece if it weren’t for the newsletter.
What I learned: Sign up for newsletters from journals that I admire. If the newsletters include writing — not just links to other writing — that I love, stay signed up. If the newsletter is merely a listing of links, or I have signed up purely because of a narcissistic notion that it will further my career, well, then. Unsubscribe.
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