Jambalaya

Upon reading your manuscript, we’ve decided to eviscerate you, couple our criticism with a searing personal attack. Your writing offended us greatly—I speak for our editors current and retired—and we would select certain word choices we disliked, but we truly hated every word, including mere articles, prepositions, and conjunctions. Thanks to your writing, we can no longer enjoy eating jambalaya, dancing the jitterbug, speaking Hungarian.

Your work, if work is what we should call it, was senseless (but not artistically senseless, like absurdist or nihilist), plotless if you even attempted plot, and pointless. It pains us to waste energy discussing it, though we feel the words drivel, garbage, and nonsense are appropriate.

We ask that you never submit another word to us, and, for the world’s betterment, to any other existing or future medium. Do not self-publish—there are legal maneuvers we would pursue for humanity’s good. We would suggest you burn your existing manuscripts but don’t want to waste precious oxygen. Recycle but we fear someone handling your material before it’s reduced to pulp will read one letter.

Our recommendation: place all of your work in a metal box. Drop it into the Mariana Trench. Let it sink to the world’s deepest point. Pray no one ever recovers it.