Cold as …
What? Cold as  ice? That can sound refreshing these recent hot days.

No not that sort of …”Cold as a form rejection” … That is what the writer said … “Cold as a form rejection” … Yes, he did. He said it twice.

Was it mental block that made it invisible to me at first? Why I only noticed it in the final sentence of this beautiful piece of writing at http://lascauxreview.com/2014/02/awp-survival-guide/#comment-1897
Nothing is ever refreshing about rejection. It can even freeze a young aspiring writer to death.

Some of us survive

In later years I discovered that in order to be regarded as a real writer you had to develop certain qualities that, cure or kill, would surely wipe out all those silly youthful aspirations to help build a world of justice and peace.

If you developed tenacity and audacity and charm and the ability to write what the majority of people wanted to read, then you were on your way to a career as a professional writer. Facts didn’t really much matter and shouldn’t get in the way of a good tear-jerking story. As long as there was a war on this was guaranteed to work. Join certain organizations and you might even get paid a good salary.

If you were very careful about what you did and said and made sure you slavered praise upon the current hero and damned the villian-of-the day you might might even avoid being blacklisted by … Oh … You consider that a paranoid thought? Yes, once upon a time I too considered the idea of being blacklisted as the silly putty of a jealous imagination.

Pillow talk anyone?

A lifetime of experience has finally opened me to the possibility that there are … Hmmmm let’s just say that I now consider the possiblity that not everyone is nice … That there are a few mean gatekeepers in this world. Whether they ever actually call it black-listing is another thing. http://www.writing-world.com/life/form.shtml

Why would anyone engage in black-listing?
Who?
Who are some of the barely visible people we might never have heard about? People who were blacklisted …

Ruby Dee

Ossie Davis

Elmer Bernstein

Hugo Butler

Paul Jarrico

Donald Ogden Stewart

Jean Rouverol

Ring Lardner, Jr., The last member of the Hollywood 10. Lardner died in 2000

Getting back to form rejection, is it really better than just coming out with the truth and … What do you mean … It sucks!
So deal with it … http://m.wikihow.com/Handle-Rejection

Now is that nice? http://brevity.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/decoder-thingy/

Rejection

This morning I awoke with a new thought about the idea of rejection.

Funny how it is … You sleep on an idea and by morning the meaning of that idea might have made a 90 degree, possibly even a 180 degree turn.

So here it is another day and if yesterday’s look at rejection had a rather grey look, perhaps that is because I lived too long in the shadow of the Powers-that-be. Today I see it from the opposite side. … And no … No more of that silly name-calling or those meaningless labels … There is nothing abnormal about adopting a different viewpoint.

So rejection as a positive force? Yes.
Today I empower myself to reject bullies. I have that right. I will reject any person or group trying to force upon me their religion, their political party and any belief systems to which I prefer not to subscribe. Basically that is what I see as my right. No more mob rule repackaged as democracy.