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To: GROUND ZERO™ who wrote (1432)	11/24/2002 3:19:03 PM
From: Junkyardawg	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1750

GZ I thought you may find this interesting. You Think YOU'VE Been Rejected! Letters of rejection are really only hurtful when they're addressed to you personally, but we can still emphathize with the ones that follow. Mainly, they help us to realize that rejection is simply a writer's way of life; bumps on the wonderfully horrific journey. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language." Editor of the San Fransciso Examiner to Rudyard Kipling. Mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark recently received a $60 plus million dollar advance on her next five books, but this is what happened when she was sending out her manuscript "Journey Back to Love" in the early 60's: "We found the heroine as boring as her husband did." Classic writer Colette was told in a letter of rejection: "I wouldn't be able to sell 10 copies." A rejection letter to Pierre Boulle about his "Bridge Over River Kwai": "A very bad book." To Jean Auel, regarding "The Clan of Cave Bear": "We are very impressed with the depth and scope of your research and the quality of your prose. Nevertheless ... we don't think we could distribute enough copies to satisfy you or ourselves." Letter rejecting "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." "Jonathan Livingston Seagull will never make it as a paperback." From the publisher of a magazine refusing an offer to bid on the paperback rights to Richard Bach's best selling novel. Avon Books eventually bought those rights and sales totaled more than 7.25 million copies. H.G. Wells had to endure the indignity of this rejection when he submitted his manuscript, "The War of the Worlds": "An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would "take" ...I think the verdict would be 'Oh don't read that horrid book'." And when he tried to market "The Time Machine": "It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader." Jacqueline Susann's "Valley of the Dolls" received this response, "...she is a painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish writer whose every sentence, paragraph and scene cries for the hand of a pro. She wastes endless pages on utter trivia, writes wide-eyed romantic scenes ...hauls out every terrible show biz cliche in all the books, lets every good scene fall apart in endless talk and allows her book to ramble aimlessly ..." When Irving Stone sent his manuscript, "Lust for Life," this is what came back in the mail: "A long, dull novel about an artist." I guess that meant no thanks. Even Dr. Seuss was not above the scathing rejection: "...too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling." Before Ayn Rand became known as an intellectual and her books as classics, she had to get past this from one publisher: "It is badly written and the hero is unsympathetic." And this from another: "I wish there were an audience for a book of this kind. But there isn't. It won't sell." So much for "The Fountainhead". 14 years later she was sending "Atlas Shrugged" on its publishing rounds and reading in the return mail" "... the book is much too long. There are too many long speeches... I regret to say that the book is unsaleable and unpublishable." To writer Samuel Johnson (though I don't know which book the editor was referring to): "Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good." Regarding "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold": "(this book has) no future ..." Did you know that only 7 of Emily Dickinson's poems were ever published during her lifetime? A rejection early in her career: "(Your poems) are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities." To Edgar Allen Poe: "Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume." Herman Melville had written a manuscript entitled "Moby Dick": "We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenbile Market in (England). It is very long, rather old-fashioned..." Jack London: "(Your book is) forbidding and depressing." Ernest Hemingway, regarding his novel, "The Torrents of Spring": "It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it." Ouch! William Faulkner may be a classic writer to this, and prior, generations, but back when he was trying to crack the publishing market, he had to read letters like this one: "If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don't think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don't have any story to tell." Which was kinder than the rejection he would receive just two years later: "Good God, I can't publish this!" According to the terrific little book, "Rotten Rejections" (Pushcart Press, Andre Bernarnd, 1990), "Auntie Mame" went through 15 rejections over a period of 5 years before finding a home at Vanguard Press. Now ... go check your mailbox and no matter what's in there, hold that chin up high!