Comments on: Post-a-Rejection-Letter Friday

By: estelle

estelle — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:50:38 +0000

there is quite a lot of potential for solidarity in sharing rejections. this blog has built up a following, quite cheekily too. http://literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com/

By: S.B

S.B — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 04:01:03 +0000

Re: the pen name comment… oh, dear.

In a rejection letter I was once told to get a pen name because only ‘English’ names sold, and mine’s Gaelic. This was in 2006.

By: Conflux: Blog

Conflux: Blog — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:19:12 +0000

[...] Larbalestier writes on rejection She also covers “Bad Writing Days” [...]

By: Justine

Justine — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:08:31 +0000

Jonathan M: Maybe so. Fortunately my name is Larbalestier not “Larbalestrier”. No extra “r.”

By: Jonathan M

Jonathan M — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:06:22 +0000

Oh come on!

We all know Justine Larbalestrier is a pen-name for William Shatner. The editor had you bang to rights!

By: Amie Stuart

Amie Stuart — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:02:45 +0000

Justine….LOL I never thought of it like that!

Alma….I had an editor cold-request a book and then leave the publishing house *sigh*

By: lotti

lotti — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 06:18:15 +0000

eh, wouldn’t it be funny? I think most authors get really great stories rejected at least once. and have a good laugh about it later.

By: cuileann

cuileann — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 05:00:28 +0000

Oh heavens, it’s great to laugh at the losers who passed up awesome writers.

The last time I saw Shannon Hale speak she had her rejection letters with her, all in one long laminated roll…it must have been thirty feet long.

Do you think publishers remember books they passed up when they see them become successful? Like, “Oh darn, that book I rejected two years ago just won a Newbery Honor”?

By: lotti

lotti — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 09:28:32 +0000

sigh. I would be rather happy right now to get a rejection letter. It would at least be a start, because I have never plucked up the courage to go down the publishing road. What inspired you to get published?

By: Post a rejection letter Friday at Tobias Buckell Online

Post a rejection letter Friday at Tobias Buckell Online — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:12:58 +0000

[...] Justine Larbalestier [...]

By: rebecca

rebecca — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:22:29 +0000

i have a printout of my one and only rejection letter somewhere, but i’m not at home and the email is long gone. alas. it was something generic about how they weren’t looking for that sort of thing at the moment. lol. it was funny. i had no idea what i was doing.

By: Matt Smit

Matt Smit — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:18:05 +0000

It might have been an earlier draft of Left hand of Darkness…

By: Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:31:39 +0000

From an agent who shall remain mercifully nameless to protect the holy – she seemed interested in my work, asked to see more of it, left me all hopeful and fluttery… and then IT came, the rejection letter, written *in longhand* in the little bit of white space at the bottom of my own original cover letter to her.

It read, in toto, thusly:

“I’m sorry, I won’t be able to take on the MS, I’m leaving to join a seminary in two days.”

SHort of a Paul of Tarsus convresion on the road to Damascus and a sudden intense and irresistible stab of Vocation… welll.. it does occur to me that she might have known about this seminary thing in advance. And that she might have acted accordingly, as in, not asked for manuscripts from eager authors when she more or less had no intention of doing anything with them other than perhaps offering up prayers for the writers’ tortured souls….

By: cherie priest

cherie priest — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:40:55 +0000

I don’t have any of mine handy either (also in storage, somewhere back east), but I got at least two rejections similar to yours — wherein I was told that I needed to at least MENTION my real name … though one of them also added that I’d picked a neat pseudonym.

By: Brent

Brent — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:03:47 +0000

Unfortunately I didn’t keep either my early submissions or the rejection letters that went with them. I do recall one that had several typos; that lifted my spirits quite a bit.

Omni also used to give great rejection letters. The boilerplate “we’re sorry but your submission doesn’t meet our needs at this time” was phrased so nicely it sounded like they were sorry their magazine wasn’t right for my story.

By: Justine

Justine — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:32:36 +0000

Pixelfish: Hah! Well, he was wrong, wasn’t he?

Julia Rios: It’s amazing what a difference distance makes, isn’t it?

By: Julia Rios

Julia Rios — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:29:15 +0000

The one that stung the most said, “Your protagonist needs to protag.” I’d been certain he did, of course, but looking back on it, my opinion has changed.

By: Pixelfish

Pixelfish — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:23:32 +0000

Brian Cholfin (Crank!) once sent me a form rejection telling me not to watch so much television. I self-flagellated for days. (Have never been much for TV–I usually watch it after the fact, a la Buffy and Deadwood and Six Feet Under. At the time, I didn’t even own a TV.)

By: Justine

Justine — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:03:38 +0000

You shouldn’t have been. Hand-written is usually a good sign. Plus they were recycling! Very enviromentally sound.

By: Amie

Amie — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:58:39 +0000

All mine are at home. I do remember being super-insulted at getting a rejected scribbled on my query letter–and there were coffee stains LOL