That Rejection Thing

from Jacqueline

One of the closing sessions at the Book Passage Mystery Writers Conference is on setting some writing-related goals for the coming year, yet at the same time, realistically taking in aspects of life such as the day job, aging parents, demanding teens, the kitchen remodel, etc., etc. Its important to bring in the reality check, because we can get so gung-ho at times, we set unattainable goals and then throw up our hands in despair when it doesn’t all go to plan. But that’s not the point of this post, thrilling though it might seem ....



Having the courage to send out your work to agents and editors is something we look at in the session, and it’s at this point that I tend to bore everyone with the story of how a riding accident led me to finish the book I’d been lingering over, and within a year that book was contracted and in production. I tell that story, not just because I present that session, but because, having gone through an arm-threatening accident and surgery, I had absolutely no fear of an editor telling me my book wasn’t any good, or an agent sending me the “it’s a subjective decision” letter. As I say to our attendees, what the heck could those agents and editors do – find me and crush the other arm if they didn’t like what I’d written?



In telling this story, I try to take away some of the awe with which we hold those decision-makers. Sure, agents and editors are important people, but they aren’t the last word on your destiny as a writer. That’s up to you. And as we all know, they don’t come knocking at the door asking if we’ve got a book (OK, OK, so they do if you’re Dan Brown, John Grisham or a literary luminary), so it’s up to you to take the leap.



Just can’t help it – love the horse pics. Now then, moving on ....

I always found the challenges endured by the most famous authors when taking their creative wares to market to be pretty inspiring, in a Warped Winspear sort of way. The first time I visited Jack London’s home on his Valley of the Moon property in Sonoma County, California, I was more than interested to read some of his 600 or so rejection letters. And the guy just kept on writing and writing and sending those stories out. Ah-ha, I thought, this is just like working in sales – it’s a numbers game. Keep on hitting those agents one after the other with your work and something will stick soon and you’ll be in the game. And I still think that, but you have to keep hitting your work with the same energy, learning as you revise and rewrite, so that you are going out there with the best writing you can possibly forge.



So it was with a degree of mirth that I read this week another article on revelations from the archive of Alfred A.Knopf, considered one of the great literary publishers of his time – and, it turns out, a pretty interesting rejector of promising manuscripts. At the University of Texas at Austin, where the Knopf archive is held, there is a veritable treasure trove of copies of rejection letters sent out between the 1940s and 1970’s. Here are a few authors, and the key reason for rejection of their work:

SYLVIA PLATH: 'There isn't enough genuine talent'
JACK KEROUAC: 'Frenetic and scrambling'
ANNE FRANK: 'Very dull'
GEORGE ORWELL: 'Impossible to sell animal stories'
JORGE LUIS BORGES: 'Utterly untranslatable'
VLADIMIR NABOKOV: 'Too racy'
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER: 'It's Poland and the rich Jews again'
ANAIS NIN: 'No commercial advantage in acquiring her'

The good news is that in each case, someone, somewhere in a publishing house, saw the literary light and took a chance. Remember that. Remember Jack London’s hundreds of rejection letters. Let that be your call of the wild. And if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.

And in closing, I am sure at least one of my fellow Naked Authors has written on this subject before – there’s bound to be a bit of overlap somewhere – but it was worth giving it another crack of the whip.