rejection letters I have known and hated

Trying to sell a novel (NO, IT'S NOT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL) opens you up to levels of hurt not experienced before. Try some of these extracts from my rejection letters. Wannabe novelists, leave me some of your own as comments. It helps to know others suffer, too.

"We can only take the novels that we instantly fall in love with. With yours, unfortunately, this was not the case." (Implied: We HATED this.)

"We wish you luck in finding a home for this." (Implied: You'll need it. Lots. And, garage room? You must be joking.)

"Unfortunately, there is lots of this kind of stuff about, and yours has nothing different from any of the rest." (No implication there, then ...)

"We wish you the best in finding someone more receptive than we have been." (Implied: We feel we have been very kind, but are pretending otherwise.)

Bring on the Prozac.

Comments

  1. The Japanese Student9/2/09 09:37

    Ouch.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fran Hill9/2/09 14:10

    Yes, Hillel, very ouch. Very 'a man walked into a bar', in fact.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mr. Nall11/2/09 09:35

    Oh dear, they do sound painful! Might I ask how you went about submitting your manuscript? Did you get an agent? I'm hoping to polish up 'De Factoids' somewhere down the line, you see.

    Best,

    AJN
    http://adamjamesnall.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fran Hill12/2/09 14:53

    Hi AJN - yes, I'm trying literary agents mostly because the word on the publishing street seems to be not to bother going to publishers straight off because they won't look at unagented writers. Still, I'm trying to sell my fiction, and your genre might be different. Do you have the Writers' Handbook for this year? All the agents/pubishers and their requirements/preferred genres are in there.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Count Sneaky1/3/09 09:04

    Thank you for your kind words and for following my blog. Blogs are a wonderful to learn to deal with rejection and develop the elephanine epidermis needed to become a writer.Becoming published as a writer then requires learning a few obscene hand gestures and how to dance "'til the sun comes up!" as Mehitabel the Cat says in Don Marquis' wonderful old book about archy the cockroach who is a writer. The best. Count Sneaky

    ReplyDelete

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