Small Peculiar

What this particular rejection actually said was, “We do have to release work that we like very much—we’re sorry your entry has not advanced.” Maybe they think that if they put those two ideas in close proximity, I won’t notice that they didn’t say they liked my work very much. And I get it, OK? Because they don’t have the time to respond personally, so they need form letters like this one, and of course the form letters aren’t going to be mean, but they also can’t be nice, because if you say something nice, the writer might try to contact you and demand why you didn’t publish this story you claim to like so much. So I guess they’re trying to imply they liked my work without saying anything I might follow up on. But I wish they hadn’t. This kind of equivocation just pisses me off.