Dear Potential Writer,
Thank you so much for considering sending your work our way. This reading period, our staff precognitives have been floating diligently in their photon baths, predicting future literature. Due to the large volume of unsolicited manuscripts people haven’t written yet, we can’t send a personalized rejection to everyone. But we regret to inform you that, despite what we assume will be its obvious caliber, we are going to have to pass on your unwritten manuscript.
Our precogs have envisioned an unprecedented number of prose pieces that authors have started, but maybe haven’t finished, writing. While adept at recognizing promise, they don’t see your name on any future best-seller lists. They can tell, without reading a single line, that your text will be trite and riddled with cliches. For example, that scene you were thinking of writing about your childhood horse Chestnut feels derivative of the movie A Horse of Her Own, which hasn’t come out yet, and doesn’t even have a working screenplay.
At this time, we are no longer looking at minority reports regarding upcoming literary works. We feel that good writing is predetermined —no amount of classes, copyediting, or Iowa Writers Workshops can alter the future, or push you when you stall out at 2,500 words during NaNoWriMo. In addition, we have stopped reviewing children’s books, since our precogs have detected a forthcoming one in virtually every retired professional looking for a second act.
While your untapped potential is not a good fit for our publication at this time, we highly encourage you to give thought to submitting more work to us in the future— unfinished pieces that exist solely in the recesses of your mind (or the Notes section of your iPhone). Who knows what the future holds?
I mean, we do, but it’s nice to pretend things aren’t a foregone conclusion.
Kind Regards,
Agatha, Arthur & Dash
PreWord Literary
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Ali Solomon is a writer/illustrator from New York. She is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Believer. Ali is the illustrator of I Am ‘Why Do I Need Venmo’ Years Old (Running Press, 2021), and the author/illustrator of I Love(ish) New York City: Tales of City Life (Chronicle, 2022). More at: www.ali-solomon.com