Rejection hor­ror sto­ries are like the camp­fire ghost sto­ries told to other writ­ers in hushed tones, per­haps over drinks at a hotel bar, but more likely over an email or instant message.

No, that’s not right.  Unlike ghost sto­ries, which seek to strike fear in the lis­ten­ers, these hor­ror sto­ries are meant to make us feel bet­ter.  The hor­ror comes from what was rejected, how it was rejected, and who was rejected.

I think most writ­ers, espe­cially those just start­ing out, col­lect these sto­ries to act as ward and charms against the fear of fail­ure that so often plague us as the rejec­tion let­ters mount, even those who have been writ­ing for decades.  Here are some of my favorites:

1.  Ursula K. Le Guin’s famous rejec­tion letter

The whole is so dry and air­less, so lack­ing in pace, that what­ever drama and excite­ment the novel might have had is entirely dis­si­pated by what does seem, a great deal of the time

The book being rejected?  The Left Hand of Darkness, a book that sub­se­quently found a pub­lisher and then went on to win the Nebula and the Hugo.   Read the full rejec­tion let­ter on Le Guin’s website.

2. J.K. Rowling’s long march to publication

Daughter Jessica was three-years-old when Joanne sent off her first fin­ished man­u­script. “Into the enve­lope it went, off it went and back came a very prompt response, say­ing ‘No, thank you.’ And then I got another rejec­tion let­ter. “The funny thing is they didn’t upset me because I had that back-against-the-wall men­tal­ity. By this time, I was on a teach­ing course. I knew I was going to have incred­i­bly lim­ited time to write and I just thought, ‘Well, even if what you end up with is a file full of rejec­tion let­ters, you know you tried.’ “The first agent sent me a let­ter back say­ing, ‘My client list is full’ – lit­er­ally! “No ‘Dear Madam’ and no ‘Yours sin­cerely’, and if I sound like I bear a grudge, I do because I’d sent my man­u­script in this beau­ti­ful plas­tic folder and I was broke and I didn’t have £5 to spend on a plas­tic folder and she sent it back with­out the folder and she wrote, ‘No, thank you.’ And with a hand­writ­ten PS, ‘The folder you sent would not fit in the enve­lope.’ And I just felt, ‘Well, buy big­ger envelopes, then.’ I was furious.

Even the best-selling series in recent mem­ory was rejected numer­ous times by agents and edi­tors. The truth is, something’s great­ness is not read­ily appar­ent.  You just have to keep look­ing until you find some­one who believes in your work as much as you do.  And if you don’t believe in your work utterly, why are you even both­er­ing to sub­mit it?

3. Flowers for Algernon– Gold’s Rewrite Request

As part of the larger essay “Thus Our Words Unspoken” (1994), Malzberg relates the story (as told by Robert P. Mills) of how Daniel Keyes’s clas­sic story (and one of the best SF sto­ries of all time) “Flowers for Algernon” came to be pub­lished, and pub­lished in F&SF. It seems Keyes had sub­mit­ted it to Horace Gold at Galaxy. Gold said he would pub­lish it only if Keyes made one cru­cial change: that Charlie not end up an imbe­cile at the end of the story, but remain a genius. Keyes refused and trunked the story. Then, on a shared train ride with F&SF edi­tor Mills, Mills asked Keyes for a story. Keyes thought imme­di­ately of “Flowers” and began to describe it to Mills. Mills found it inter­est­ing, asked to see the ms., and upon read­ing it wanted to pub­lish it … with one change. Keyes, assum­ing the worst, begged Mills not to ask him to change the end of the story. Mills said no, that the change he wanted was to add a girl­friend for Charlie. Keyes, relieved, agreed to the change, and we all know the rest of the story.

Dave Truesdale recounts this story, which I think is a good para­ble about stick­ing to your vision.  If you sac­ri­fice your vision for the sake of being pub­lished, then what’s the point?  Be per­sis­tent, but polite, but also will­ing to accept change sug­ges­tions from an edi­tor that makes sense.  Most of my sto­ries have been made bet­ter by an edi­tor.  But I’ve also turned down rewrite requests that I didn’t feel were in-line with what I wanted to do.  I lost money, but I felt bet­ter about myself.   But good lord, could you imag­ine a Flowers that turned out the way Gold wanted?  It would have been a travesty!

4. Brandon Sanderson– 13 Failed Novels

“I spent nine years try­ing to get pub­lished.  During that time, I wrote thir­teen nov­els.  I even­tu­ally sold the sixth, Elantris, and got a con­tract from Tor for another tril­ogy after Elantris.”

Brandon Sanderson is the cho­sen one, lit­er­ally, picked to fin­ish the long-running and unfin­ished Wheel of Time series.The man wrote a baker’s dozen of nov­els before sell­ing one! Can you really argue that stick­ing to it and being per­sis­tent doesn’t pay off in the face of that fact?

5.  Just about Every Other Author You’ve Ever Heard Of

Stephen King’s Carrie was rejected for being “dystopian.”   Rudyard #*(@ing Kipling was rejected and informed that he didn’t know how to use the English lan­guage!  Dr. Suess?  Too weird.  H.G. Wells War of the Worlds?  Too scary and dreadful.

If there’s a writer who has never once received a rejec­tion, I haven’t met him or her.  Everyone gets them.  And they suck, I won’t deny it.  I’m lax about sub­mit­ting my work because they tend to ruin my day, but even still, I know I shouldn’t let them.  They don’t mean much of any­thing beyond one editor’s (or maybe a cou­ple), or an agent’s opin­ion.  Have some faith in your work.  Keep at it, try­ing to get bet­ter.  One day, that rejec­tion let­ter you’re expect­ing will turn out to be some­thing entirely different.

Special thanks to John Joseph Adams for help­ing me find cita­tions for some of these famous rejec­tion stories.

Tagged as: My Writing, rejection letters