Rudyard Kipling once received this rejection from a publisher regarding a manuscript he submitted: “I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.” (He wrote Jungle Book, Just-So Stories, Gunga Din, among others, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.)
Writers often joke that they’ve collected enough rejection letters to wallpaper a house. (Or at least a bathroom.) I have it on good authority that Kate DiCamillo received 400 rejections before her award-winning, bestselling Because of Winn-Dixie was published. (And was later made into a movie.)
Most rejection letters are simply form letters:”Not right for us at this time.” If the letter contains a critique, we consider it and may tweak a manuscript accordingly. We know persistence is the name of the game. But even when we look on the bright side, rejection hurts. We remind ourselves that many famous authors have persisted in the face of rejection, and many publishers have ended up wishing they hadn’t said no. Among those who have been rejected:
To Emily Dickinson: “They (her poems) are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.”
For Dr. Seuss’s And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street: ” . . . too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.”
For George Orwell’s Animal Farm: “It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” (Maybe someone at that publishing house didn’t actually read it.)
For Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged: ” . . . I regret to say that the book is unsaleable and unpublishable.” (Made into movies, this book’s sales and longevity are nothing to shrug at.)
For Zane Grey’s Last of the Plainsmen: “I do not see anything in this to convince me you can write either narrative or fiction.” (Grey was one of the first millionaire authors with over 100 books, many bestsellers, many made into films.)
Re a submission of The Diary of Anne Frank: “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”
For The Bridge Over the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle: “A very bad book.” (Which became a popular novel, later made into a popular film.)
For Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth: “Regret the American public is not interested in anything on China.” (This book was required reading by the time I was in junior high.)
For Jean Auel’s The Clan of the Cave Bear: ” . . . we don’t think we could distribute enough copies to satisfy you or ourselves.” (As of 2010, this series had sold over 45 million copies worldwide.)
So, fellow writers, the bottom line is: Write the best you can today. Write better tomorrow. And don’t take rejection personally. Experts aren’t always.
(Read more in Rotten Reviews and Rejections, edited by Bill Henderson and Andre Bernard.)
© 2012 Karyn Henley. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy morguefile.com
