So I am just getting into the job of being one of the creative nonfiction editors of Literary Mama, an awesome e-zine. I haven’t edited in a while, and I have never had the position of having to select from so many submissions. This will be interesting–like anything else, especially dealing with students and colleagues, I find that a long list of things to do can make me want to be curt and brief with responses. But I am usually in the reverse position, of getting the rejections. I think the letter style I hate the most is, “It was excruciatingly difficult to choose, and we wanted to pick everyone, but we forced ourselves, almost against our better judgment, to reject you.” The style I hate second-most is the Zen-koan brevity of “Not for us.” (That was a real one recently…an online journal that was too busy to type the word “thanks” or to sign the email.) I vow this small vow: I will write “thanks,” because that’s the most important.