I get rejected a lot. At least one or two on slow days. As many as five on fast ones. I have a system set up on my mac that flashes the first few words of an incoming email in a little window at the upper left hand corner of my screen. I’m so good at reading rejections that I can usually tell from these curtailed snapshots whether it’s a rejection or an acceptance. It turns out “Thank you for sending us…” is as good as a loud buzzer on a game show–or that Wah wah wah wawawawa sound from cartoons. Just about anything personal at the start of a letter is good. So is “Congrats.” If it says “Congratulations,” I do back flips.

But alas, most are rejections. My Submittable account tells me I have over 400 of them — and that’s not anywhere near the total. I used…