Seeking inspiring/upbeat advice or observations on writer rejection for my book
As some of you already know, I'm working on a book that is both a compilation of my writer comics as well as nuggets of writerly wisdom I've found in blogs, organized by topic. I don't have a contract yet, but I'm confident enough in its saleability that I've started putting it together anyway.
The chapter I'm working on now: REJECTION.
If you've written a blog post on rejection that you think might contain some quotable advice or observation, please do post the URL in the comments below. I'd also love to hear if you've recently read a post or quote on rejection made by someone else. If it's not your post, please include the name of the author of the quote/post as well as the URL.
Ideal length: one sentence (but I'm open to longer).
If I decide to include your quote in the book, I will contact you for confirmation of the info. I'll be including a brief bio and URL of any writer quoted in the book.
I may also include your link/quote in a Writer Rejection: Don't Give Up! page that I'm revamping for Inkygirl.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
Thursday, August 12, 2010 at 12:33 PM
Reader Comments (7)
The very best rejection letter I ever received was from an editor who took my first query letter and edited it. In. Red. Ink. and she wasn't very nice about it, either. But you know what? She was right. I used nearly every suggestion she offered, and now I'm a published author with a fist-full of awards. I sent her a "thank you" email. She told me she usually gets told off when she marks up a query like she did with mine. Anything that doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.... that saying works for manuscripts and query letters as well.
Debbie - I wrote a piece about not giving up on first novels. Got my first one, THE HORSE JAR, published (finally) after sending to 50 publishers. Whew! Link is here: http://lindabenson.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Horse%20Jar
For inspirational quote, try first sentence of last paragraph.
Good luck on your book - sounds fabulous. Oh, and I adore your comics ;-)
Here's a post I wrote about my first rejection letter, if you want.
http://studentwritersmind.blogspot.com/2010/05/infinite-ladder.html
What a cool project- best of luck with it!! After a rejection from an agent, I got really depressed that I didn't have 'a second chance' but I started to think about the flip side...I have a lot of other chances. The fact of the matter is that the agent doesn't get the second chance...
My post is here: http://www.melissasarno.com/2010/05/second-chances.html
Lately rejections have been hard to take because they include lots of nice comments about the work. Then bottom line takes over. Maybe it doesn't have a big enough audience. sigh.
I got a response in January that I blogged about that caused a rewrite of my query. It is the second half of this post (in quotes):
Growing Pains
It wasn't a rejection right off, but it was certainly a rejection of the query itself. It is definitely the most helpful interaction I have had in the query process (Colleen Lindsay was the agent; she has since switch to the publishing side).
Regarding rejection, check this out: http://writerunboxed.com/2010/07/15/4213/