Rejection. If you haven’t faced it yet, you will. It’s inevitable. It’s a mark of every great author. In Ralph Keyes book The Courage to Write, he writes, “Writing fears are nearly universal. But because they’re seldom discussed openly, we feel alone with ours’.” You can replace ‘fears’ with ‘rejections’ and take out ‘nearly.’ Below you will see just how universal rejection is. Even the icons—Stephen King, Maya Angelou, Hemingway, Bradbury, and on and on—have received their own healthy stack of rejection letters:
[*] Carrie by Stephen King was rejected by 30 publishers. “We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell,” one letter said. It was finally published in 1974. When the paperback version was released a year later, it sold over a million copies in 12 months.
[*] The Four-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss was rejected by 25 publishers. It has now been translated in 40 languages with more than 2.1 million copies sold.
[*] J.K. Rowling’s original manuscript for Harry Potter was rejected by 12 different publishing houses. One literary agent warned, “You do realize, you will never make a fortune out of writing children’s books?”
[*] Most tragically, John Kennedy Toole met five years of rejection of his novel A Confederacy of Dunces, before committing suicide in 1969. Two years after his death, Tooles’ found the manuscript and set out to get it published. She was rejected by seven more publishers until Louisiana State University Press published 2,500 copies of A Confederacy of Dunces in 1980. In 1981, Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. It has since sold nearly two million copies and been translated into almost 20 languages.
You are not alone. If anything, it’s a common bond with your literary heroes.
Here’s what 17 literary greats have to say about rejection:
“Perfecting and selling your writing is a lifelong task. If you are a persistent writer, you can expect your abilities to improve with time. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill
“This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don’t consider it rejected. Consider that you’ve addressed it ‘to the editor who can appreciate my work’ and it has simply come back stamped ‘Not at this address’. Just keep looking for the right address.” — Barbara Kingsolver
“By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.” — Stephen King
“The best reaction to a rejection slip is a sort of wild-eyed madness, an evil grin, and sitting yourself in front of the keyboard muttering “Okay, you bastards. Try rejecting this!” and then writing something so unbelievably brilliant that all other writers will disembowel themselves with their pens upon reading it, because there’s nothing left to write. Because the rejection slips will arrive. And, if the books are published, then you can pretty much guarantee that bad reviews will be as well. And you’ll need to learn how to shrug and keep going. Or you stop, and get a real job.” — Neil Gaiman
“Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected by 144 publishers. If we had given up after 100 publishers, I likely would not be where I am now. I encourage you to reject rejection. If someone says no, just say NEXT!” — Jack Canfield
“I discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.’” — Saul Bellow
“Every rejection is incremental payment on your dues that in some way will be translated back into your work.” — James Lee Burke
“I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.” — Harper Lee
“I pinned my 1st rejection letter to my kitchen wall because it gave me something in common with all my fave writers!” — J.K. Rowling
“Starting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn’t realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn. Then, during the late forties, I actually began to sell short stories and accomplished some sort of deliverance from snowstorms in my fourth decade. But even today, my latest books of short stories contain at least seven stories that were rejected by every magazine in the United States and also in Sweden! So, dear Snoopy, take heart from this. The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so.” — Ray Bradbury
“I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.” — Sylvia Plath
“Only one attitude enabled me to move ahead. That attitude said, ‘Rejection can simply mean redirection.” — Maya Angelou
“All risk risks rejection…Very often, it is perseverance—not talent—which wins the day. Too often, we become discouraged by a single rejection. We forget that negative criticism is only one person’s opinion. Discouraged, we fail to go forward. This is where we often need the help of a “Believing Mirror”– someone who sees our potential and the potential of our work.” — Julia Cameron
“Work like hell! I had 122 rejection slips before I sold a story” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
“When you get a printed form attached to a story you wrote and worked on very hard and believed in, that printed rejection slip is hard to take on an empty stomach. ‘Dear sir: We regret to tell you that your submission does not meet our editorial needs.’ Well, fuck it. I regret to tell you that your rejection slip does not meet MY editorial needs.” — Ernest Hemingway
“Failure is part of it. You will be rejected dozens and dozens of times. The best way to prepare for it is to have something else in the works by the time the rejection letter arrives. Invest your hope in the next project. Learning to cope with rejection is a good trait to develop.” — Po Bronson
“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.” — Isaac Asimov
The late great novelist, playwright, and screenwriter William Goldman said, “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.” Those are his all-caps. “Not one person,” he continued, “knows for a certainty what’s going to work.” Do not let “no” stop you. Keep going!
___________
Sign up now and receive our free guide “12 Essential Writing Routines To Help You To Craft Your Own.”
Learn from the routines of superstar authors Stephen King, Gertrude Stein, John Grisham, Ernest Hemingway, Neil Gaiman, and many more.
Sign up to get a brand new writing routine in your inbox every week.
Get in touch today:
