Rejection

I have stuck to my writing schedule for five days in a row. This is good. I have also recently received three smackdown rejections (to be fair, it was three reviewers for the same journal, and it's the American Journal of Sociological Review, which is the big dog and where I cockily began submitting) for my 50-page research article, "Sexual Knowledge and Politics." A sampling:

"There is much to like about this article. It examines a major public issue of concern to social scientists and the public. It is on the whole well written and empirically grounded. On the surface, it is entirely reasonable and its findings and charts straightforward...[h]owever, there were too many parts of it that didn’t make sense to me as a social scientist..."

"This study is an analysis of the association between sexual knowledge and political affiliation/voting preferences. As such, its greatest strength is its selection of an interesting research question...[u]nfortunately...it requires major reworking to remedy the problems outlined below: Overreaching in its scope. Conflating separate issues. Overly polemical tone..."

"This manuscript poses the provocative question: Has the Republican right limited sexual knowledge via abstinence-only education in America? The author suggests that this is the case...The paper does a good job tracing the political history of sex education, but misses the opportunity to engage broader sociological theories that can serve as frameworks for how attitudes are shaped and populations are mobilized around issues...overly selective sample..."

Isn't that nice? I post this as evidence of the thick skin (read: disassociation from reality) required to be a published writer, whether of nonfiction or fiction. I'm now going to scrabble together my strips of dignity, change the title of my research article, and submit it to The Boise Journal of Theses You Can't Get Published Anywhere Else.