Dear Ms. Perabo,

I regret to inform you that the National Tragedy Office of The Department of Too Soon is denying your request to include references to the most recent multiple-fatality school shooting in the short story on which you are currently working. Due to the high volume of requests our office receives (up 67% in the last year), we are unfortunately unable to respond to each writer individually, but since your request made it to the full committee stage, we would like to take a few moments to respond to it specifically.

Let me begin by saying that this denial was not an easy, nor even ultimately a unanimous, decision. A new member of our staff, who recently transferred from the Personal Tragedy Office of the Department of Too Soon (though smaller in scope, the Personal Tragedy Office’s decisions are no less fraught), described the one-hour-and-twenty-five-minute meeting as “not uncontentious.” To be sure we have had difficult decisions before (we rejected over seventeen hundred September 11 proposals before concluding it was no longer Too Soon), but even in the case of most rejected proposals, we could agree that that there was, in fact, some potential psychological or social benefit to granting the request, some slim prospect of value, some “silver lining,” as it were, in revisiting the scene of such profound loss.

We can think of no such “silver lining” in this case.

That said, there were two members of the committee who, “despite their better judgment,” as one later admitted, found your proposal compelling, and who, despite being unable to make a coherent argument on your behalf (after multiple attempts), wished to grant your request. They were outvoted.

As one no-voting member commented, Ms. Perabo, you will surely understand that, if we are to err in this case, it is best to err on the side of the children.

Sincerely,

Wesley Newgate

National Tragedy Office

The Department of Too Soon