mXm • blog

For those of us who have creative aspirations – be it in music, drama, writing – rejection is the primary constant as we all try to peck away at gaining acceptance, making progress, making money, even. (Goodness! Who is in this for the money??? I’m shocked!)

The previous post shows the rejection letter sent to Alice Walker, author of the Color Purple. I will be posting a few others soon.

But this news feature caught my eye. It’s all about persistence, perseverance and simply just not giving up.
Be that this may or may not be the very best novel or story ever written – is not the point – the point is, she just didn’t give up.

And so : :

Her story is worth reading if for no other reason than, ‘if she can do it, we can do it’. . . . . right?

With virtually no prior writing training or experience, but seemingly just a good idea, she made it happen for herself.

Read the whole article here

mXm : : Rejection is the currency of any creator – of music, of art, sculpture, writing • Dear John letters as they are also known. Personally, I think that writing efforts, writers, authors – given the nature of their craft, bare their souls in attempting to describe passion, pain, anger, fear – all the human emotions – and in the process of the actual writing, the conveying of such, are required to expose themselves – leave themselves vulnerable . . . . and the subsequent rejection by publishers, agents – the public, leaves scars – sometimes deep scars. Over the next days / weeks even, this page will carry visual copies of actual rejection letters sent to writers – who pressed on, persevered – and became world famous in spite of rejection.

This is the actual rejection letter sent to Alice Walker.

The following is written by : : Emily Temple, who is the managing editor at Lit Hub. Her first novel, The Lightness, was published by William Morrow/HarperCollins in June 2020

Tis (almost) the season for resolutions. If you’re a writer, here’s an idea: resolve to get rejected. 100 times this year, if you’re lucky. After all, some very famous books (and authors) began their careers at the bottom of the NO pile. To inspire you to keep on writing and submitting, here are some of the most rejected books I could dig up.

Of course, this list is incomplete, and I’ve given preference to books that were rejected but are now well-known and widely loved. (Books that were rejected many times because they were pretty mediocre are just not as interesting.) Even with the higher-profile books, I discounted those with numbers I couldn’t verify, or those that weren’t specific enough—for instance, it looks like Margaret Mitchell’s oft-repeated 38 rejections is a myth; Alex Haley may have gotten “hundreds” of rejections before publishing Roots, but they weren’t all necessarily for the novel; ditto Kate DiCamillo’s 473 rejections before Because of Winn-Dixie; Eimear McBride heard nothing but no for A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing for 7 years, but I don’t know if she got ten nos or a hundred. Some authors, like Beatrix Potter and Proust, got so many rejections that they decided to self-publish—and good thing they did—but I don’t have numbers on those either. If you do, give strength to your fellow rejectees and add on to the list in the comments.

and Momma told us . . . . 

1971 • Al Waxman, the much loved and remarkable Canadian actor
appeared in this TV commercial for Kleenex.

It was a huge success in terms of the public’s adoption of most all aspects
of the tongue-in-cheek humour it embraced.

‘get plenty of rest’ . . . . . . . indeed – but more than anything, the last line,
‘and Momma told us to stay inside’ has stayed with me, in my memory,
these past 50 years.

Did Momma foresee the pandemic? Of course not – but there is, shall
we say, an aptness – to the message.

I hope you enjoy this – I still get the giggles.

Trust me!