photo credit | Lindsey Turner, Flickr Creative Commons | Note: not actual submissions to contest. Or actual editor. 

1. 378. That’s how many book-length manuscripts were in the submission box at the deadline for the second annual Pressgang Prize.
2. I’ve been dipping into the box since the contest began, and I can tell you there’s a lot of good work in there, a lot of good writers in there. Former winners of the Drue Heinz prize, the Flannery O’Conner prize, the Bakeless. Name a major grant, and someone in that box has won it. And there is no shortage of emerging writers in the box whose work is exciting, too. The manuscript that takes the prize is going to be incredible. I’m exhilarated.
3. Also a little depressed. I’m going to be turning down a lot of worthy work, saying no to a long line of deserving writers.
4. This is hard. It doesn’t stop being hard.
5. Harder than I expected it to be when I started Pressgang a couple of years ago. By that point I’d been an editor of lit mags for several years. I wasn’t exactly callous about rejecting stories, but I accepted it as part of the business.
6. It’s different with books.
7. With a story, you’re talking about something that has taken the writer weeks or months. Not a small amount of time, but not her life’s work, either. Plus, the writer probably has more stories lying around. The writer has diversified. With a book, you’re talking about years. Decades, sometimes. One basket, so many eggs.
8. I don’t send rejections lightly, is what I’m saying. I feel every one. 
9. The older I get, the tougher my skin and the softer my heart. Taking rejection for my own work doesn’t sting like it used to, but every year it’s harder to send them out. 
10. If I ever quit this business, it will be because I can’t send out one more rejection. Empathy is degenerative.
11. I can hear the scornful internet people now. Oh, the poor executioner. So many heads to chop off. His arms must get tired! To be clear, I’m not looking for sympathy here. I just want to give you a glimpse behind one particular curtain. Publishing could use more transparency, I think.
12. These notes should probably be more upbeat. After all, there is so much good stuff in that box, and the general tone of dispatches from publishers is expected to be celebratory (if sometimes a little strained or shrieky)—but I want to be honest. And an honest look at a submission box for any press or agent can be discouraging. It can seem like a miracle that anyone makes it through that strait successfully. 
13. But honesty is different from cynicism. If we’re interested in honesty, we’ll recognize that writing and publishing—making art together—can be good work, worthy work, even when it’s clobbering your heart. And that many writers do, somehow, survive the clobbering and publish fine books.
14. Someone is going to win that prize. And that book will be amazing. And the world will be better for it, even if most people won’t know it. You will go on writing, and I will go on publishing, and we will honor each other’s struggle. That will be our integrity.