Names and Nothing by Bharti Bansal
“The pieces attached below were considered trash by me because I believe they lack a certain voice. Voice which is firm and concrete and says exactly how I feel. These pieces have been rejected so many times and now I believe they don't belong anywhere except the notes in my phone. I think even though they can be crafted well, there will always be a certain lacking in how they come out in the world and speak for themselves. Names and nothing was written out of sheer desperation to be heard.”
Homesick by Celina Tran
“‘Homesick’ is a small personal/personal essay about the loss of friendships, love and childhood as time passes. It’s also a confrontation between the child who yearns to leave her small town and the young adult who misses home. To me, Homesick was an instant reject because it is unpolished and raw. It is but blood and tears on a blank page, a tiny crumb of my soul, so I think that even before its existence, it was always just too honest to be put out in the world. But because it is honest, it would make me a villain to let it drown in my ever-growing pile of rejects.”
Greyhound by Sarah(Qiuqi) Bovold
“The reason I trashed it is because I want to "move on". I started writing it at the end of 2020 and have revised the essay countless times. By that, I mean the "big revisions". It had been rejected ten times. Whenever I was working on a new piece, I always turned back to revise this one. I have no idea what I can do about it, to be honest.”
I’m Afraid To Do My Laundry by Stephanie L. Haun
“I had a heart attack at 40. Physically, I’m mostly back to normal, and since I almost didn’t have a future to look forward to, I mentally struggle with a few thoughts and fears that I can only tackle one at a time—in the present—because nothing is like it was before. The laundry was waiting to be put away when I got out of the hospital, and the following Thursday, I had to figure out how I was going to do the laundry again without coming close to death. Instead, I managed to make it until Monday, and that’s when the new laundry day was born. I like doing my laundry on Mondays. If my laundry is going to take me out of this life, then it’s not going to ruin my hard-earned weekend in the process.
I’ve given up on trying to place it “as is” somewhere. I feel like the shortness of the piece is important. Some journals that have rejected it have commented that they felt like it’s not a finished piece. I’m usually willing to make whatever revisions editors deem important, but for some reason, I’m not willing to concede on this one. It feels wrong to change this piece.”
Turriptopsis Dohrnil by Carly Chandler
“I scrapped this piece because I forgot that it existed. I wrote this personal essay and it remains a fossil.”
Flickers of Mnemosyne by Kaia Boyer
“While I did, wholeheartedly, enjoy writing it, this piece took one hell of a toll on me. It left me with that tight, sinking feeling in my chest, that I've got all the words out and the idea down but that it's just not good enough or up to my usual par. My writing peers told me differently, so I sent it out, but after a few rejections I was sure I was never going to find a good home for it nor be truly happy with it, and left it to sit in my little yellow-tagged folder in Finder, never used and rarely opened. But I love this piece and I love the concept I ended up with.”
Teaching at a Toxic University by Lev Raphael
“I scrapped this piece for one main reason: I cannibalized it for my mystery series set in the wild world of academia. Once I did that, I stopped thinking it could stand on its own. I abandoned the piece and moved on to finish and publish many other personal essays in the last twelve months. With some distance, though, I like it better than before.”