An editor once asked me, in rejecting my story: "Where's the hope?" I didn't have a good response, except to feel an inarticulate rage. The young person quoted here is much more articulate about the inadequacy of hope as a sentimental emotion. Relevant in so many situations.https://twitter.com/elizabethrosner/status/1105620341248802816 …
Editors may reject whatever they please, of course, and need not explain their actions. But readers want above all to be moved by what they read. And the most powerful aesthetic emotions are not always hopeful. Indeed, we tend to remember most vividly those stories that pain us.