”I wrote this piece over seven or eight years ago when I was a teenager starting out with writing original fiction. I never did anything with it, as I was a very depressed high schooler who didn't believe that anything I wrote had any value to it. I was one of those kids who had parents with a very specific view of what my future should be and disparaged any interest in the arts. In recent years, and now with a bit more control over my life, I've decided to dive into my passion for writing. I've also done a deep clean of all my storage drives and found this. I'm an adult now, with years and years of writing practice behind me, and reading this story made me cringe. I understand that I was a child when I wrote this, but I find the concept and the wording very...well, childish. I find the execution sloppy and a little too try-hard, all the markings of a kid trying to write in a way he found cool. I was going to delete it, but then I remembered your zine.  For all that I might find my younger self's efforts laughable, it was those efforts that kept me alive. I can cringe at my younger self all I want, but I wouldn't be where I am in my writing journey without this little story. So, instead of deleting it, I'm submitting it, and I can hope my teenage self finds some joy in that.”

“I wrote this story with my heart. I'm really sure, the work authored by the heart will also be accepted by the heart. Even though I was rejected many times, I don't care. Someday, there will be readers who welcome it with sincerity.”

“This one was inspired by an idea of wanting to have a piece based in conversation. I feel I failed to explore the emotional challenges that the main character was going through, and with each edit I made, it just felt protracted. I still like the concept, but couldn't write it down on paper.”

“This piece is actually the beginning and ending of a full-length novel that has been long-abandoned. I gave up on it because I began writing it in my twenties, before my five babies...and because I am in such a vastly different head space than I was then, I worry I wouldn't be able to do the characters justice anymore!”

“I've liked this story and I've hated it. This being Friday night (when everything seems possible), I've decided I like it. Again. I once added one words, then cut two hundred. There was a robot in it at one point and a cat whose name I've forgotten.”

“This was the first flash fiction piece I really wrote (and finished). I wrote it after I got COVID and became fascinated by Kurt Cobain. I initially wrote it based on a writing prompt on Twitter—something about the end of the world and a gas pump attendant. I didn’t share it with anyone in my life but I quietly submitted it to a few places. All rejections. I still like it, but it may be too strange, or too real, I don’t know. Do what you will.”

“I wrote this one afternoon when my mom and I were having a garage sale this summer. I just found it suddenly ridiculous that we have all these fears about shootings in public places, yet here we are, sitting on our driveway. What makes us think we're safe here? Once I started writing, the voice of the it took over. It was a blast to follow around, but it never told me the exact significance of Albert. I could tell Albert meant something to it, but it didn't want to talk about its past to me any more than it absolutely had to. I think that's fine, and I don't want to pry, but I also worry that makes the story not work in some way? I love that it seems to save Albert, and finds a companion, and drives off into the wind with them, but something doesn't quite click between all those pieces. I think. That said, any more fussing with this story would ruin its magic, so I'm just going to leave it here.”

“Migration is a piece that I truly believed in when I initially wrote it. I felt captivated by the environment. I dived deep into Osprey research and now I'm obsessed with them. However, after four rewrites and what feels to be an endless amount of rejections, I feel weighed down by this piece and if it doesn't make it here, I think it's time to let it go.”

“I submitted this short story to a lot of magazines and presses that I thought would be a good home for my work, but it was consistently rejected immediately after submitting it. I lost confidence in the piece, despite loving it when I first wrote it. This is my last chance for this piece before it's trashed!”

“I scrapped this piece because the more I tried to write it like a ‘pretty piece of prose’, I just wanted to write a piece of horror. It wasn’t doing what I needed it to.”

“I like this piece. It is intended to be a light, romantic story with a simple plot. I trashed it because publishers regularly overthink the piece and its characters.”

“I trashed my story, ‘Haunted Skies’, because I thought that since it was rejected by two horror publications, it wasn’t good enough.”