C.S. Lewis, received over 800 rejections before he made his first sale.
Lewis’s works have now been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies over the years.
C.S. Lewis Quotes:
What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.
I am sure that some are born to write as trees are born to bear leaves: for these, writing is a necessary mode of their own development. If the impulse to write survives the hope of success, then one is among these. If not, then the impulse was at best only pardonable vanity, and it will certainly disappear when the hope is withdrawn.
Want to find out about other famous author rejections? Visit Writers & Rejections: Don’t Give Up!
Sources:
Examining The Resilience Of Responding To Rejection
Rejected! by Scott Nicholson
C.S. Lewis Wikipedia entry
Great Writing Quotes - BitterSweetLife
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
This has been the most encouraging of all to me since Lewis is one of my favorite writers and his books have become so well known even after his death.
800, eh? Well, then, just 797 to go for me.
And it seems not to be a pardonable vanity for me, so…onward!
Oops. Not that it truly matters but I wrote my website incorrectly. See? Editing, editing, editing polishes all!
Once again, thanks for the encouraging post
This is very heartening to read.
800 times? What’s the evidence for that stat? Because Lewis’s first post-school published work was a piece called “Death in Battle,” which appeared in REVEILLE in 1919, when he was only twenty-one years old.