tomeubanks.com

        As Artistic Director of The Elite Theatre Company, I receive several new plays a year for submission to our season.  I select one unpublished and unproduced play each year that will fit with and balance the season of five plays.  It's one of my most important jobs as Artistic Director, and it takes me from the end of February to around September to put a season together.
        Many plays are flawed and not ready to produce.  When I began accepting submissions in 2008, I discovered the other side of "publishing," and the residual task of rejecting a writer's work.  I hate it. 
        But I remembered something that happened to me in 1986 when I began in earnest to send my short stories to literary and commercial fiction magazines like ZYZZYVA, Stories, Fiction Magazine, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.  Nearly all of the rejections came as generic form rejections.  Except from one magazine editor:  Howard Junker, editor of ZYZZYVA, a San Francisco journal of west coast writers and artists. 
        Howard Junker hand-wrote most of his rejections and sometimes gave a reason for the rejection.  Here's the first rejection note I received from him for a story I sent called To Insure Prompt Service about a writer in a bar who picks up on a drunken woman, takes her home and does the right thing:

                                    

        It reads: "As you must by now have realized stories 1) set in bars 2) with writers as heros often are returned.  Onward."  
        That Junker penned the note in ink and gave me a reason was unique, but what was exciting to me and continues to be, was his gentle command of "Onward."  On every rejection I received from Junker, he ended it with that word.
        I have adopted that word as my own personal closing to many things I write, especially on rejection letters to playwrights, even at times at the end of one of these postings.  Sometimes I use the word to end confrontational e-mails with friends and associates as a means for exposing my intentions to move on, forget the past.  
        Onward.  
        Simply put it means forward in time or order or degree.  Okay, "Onward" is also a song performed by the British band Yes from their seventh track on their ninth studio album, Tormato, by Chris Squire--the only song on the album for which singer Jon Anderson gets no writing credit.  
        But for me, it means only that I shouldn't take criticism, rejection or confrontation as an excuse for stopping or going backwards.  I try my hardest to understand that rejection is just that much closer to acceptance.  And it won't happen unless I move forward.  
        Thanks, Mr. Junker.
        Onward!
        
If you are interested in subscribing or submitting stories to ZYZZYVA, and perhaps getting your very own rejection from Mr. Junker--or, better yet, a letter of acceptance!--go to www.zyzzyva.org.