When I was in my twenties, a boyfriend broke up with me
because he said he wanted to spend more time drinking Budweiser with his
friends rather than hang around with me. I suppose I was upset at first, but
really, who can compete with that? Budweiser is, after all, the King of Beers,
while I am a mere descendant of humble Italian and Irish peasants. Over time, I have come to think of this as my most
fortuitous rejection; shortly after he left me I met my husband, and I have
been happily married for nearly 25 years. All functioned as it should in my
universe.
I have
decided to keep the ridiculousness of that rejection in my mind as I go through
the process of submitting my manuscripts for publication. It is sometimes
difficult to keep perspective – last week I received two rejections within
twenty minutes of each other, about a week after an agent who had offered me
representation withdrew the offer when I asked if we could possibly negotiate
the terms of the contract. The terms would have me agree to relinquishing 20 percent of everything I
owned and thought of, including random ideas and possibly one or both of my
kids. I didn’t have a problem with random ideas, since most of those involve matters
like where to plant the beets and what might make an awesome color combination
for hair clips, but I did have a problem with turning over twenty percent of my
kids – one of them cooks and the other occasionally can be badgered into mowing
the lawn. Long story short, I remain unpublished and unrepresented.
In the
midst of my brief self-pity party, I made a snarky remark to someone I felt was
a smidge overly optimistic about submission prospects, and found myself
agreeing to write something about rejection.
And while I’m sure further details of my experience with Mr.
Still-An-Alcoholic would be incredibly engaging, it seemed more prudent to
discover what other writers had gone
through instead. A sampling, for which
you might want to sit down:
Margaret
Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind,
was rejected 38 times. Kathryn Stockett of The
Help was rejected 60 times. Thirty-one publishers turned down James
Patterson – he has since had sales of over 220 million books, spearheaded
literacy projects for children, and had nineteen consecutive number one New York Times bestsellers. Stephen King
received thirty rejections for Carrie,
which was only completed after his wife retrieved it from the trash, where he’d
thrown it after being rejected for an earlier project. He’s done okay for himself since.
J.K.
Rowling was told “No thank you” by fourteen publishers before Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was picked up. Alex Haley worked for eight years on Roots only to be turned down a whopping
200 times for it – the book later sold over 8 million copies (1.5 million of
that in the first seven months!) and was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize. Even
the Diary of Anne Frank was rejected
– fifteen times.
Most of
my rejection letters have been along the lines of “Thank you, but it’s not
something we feel is right for our list” or “Thanks for your submission but
it’s not for us. We wish you the best,” or my personal favorite (and my first
rejection letter), “Please remember I am only one person and while the book may
not be right for me, I’m sure you’ll meet with success elsewhere.” Nobody’s ever been hostile or rude. But consider these comments:
“Stick
to teaching.” Louisa May Alcott was given this feedback in response to Little Women. The book has now been in
print for over 140 years.
“An
endless nightmare. I think the verdict would be ‘don’t read this horrid book’,”
was one opinion given to H.G. Wells for his classic War of the Worlds.
Vladimir
Nabokov was told, “I recommend it be buried under a rock for a thousand years”
in reference to Lolita, which went on
to eventually sell 50 million copies.
And
finally, keep this in mind: It took Agatha Christie five years of submitting
her work before she was published. The only other author to outsell her to date
is William Shakespeare.
Feel any better?
Me neither, actually. But knowing
that my dinky total number of rejections so far pales in comparison to the
quantity of “No thank yous” and other less kind responses these giants received
does inspire me to keep trying. On a
grand scale, think of it this way – What were the opinions of 200 publishing
professionals against Alex Haley’s eventual 8 million readers? Or the 14
individuals who didn’t “get” Harry Potter against the 450 million and counting
that did?
I'm going to persevere. Eventually that one agent or publisher or distributor is going to come along and we'll have a nice discussion about my random ideas and how they're just what they've been looking for. Maybe we'll talk over a beer.
