No, I Won't Go Out With You: How To Handle Rejection

                                                                        I'm a full time hustla posted on the block,                                                                              got to get it to live and I'm never going to                                                                             stop. Now that's gangsta, now that's gangsta.
                                                                                    -Bun B

Your standard rejection slip is like a simple and concrete "No" or “You're not my type."
If you get a slip with comments, this is like a "maybe."  "Fix yourself up a bit, work a bit harder, impress me, and then maybe.
Receiving comments like "we liked your work, submit again in the future," is like "yeah, maybe, not anytime soon, but give me a call some time…"

If you would like to increase your chances of getting rejected:

            -- don't read submission guidelines
            --don't read the journals
            --don't include an SASE
            --be careless about punctuation
            --don't send a cover letter
            -- sending previous rejection letters with submissions
           
At first, I didn't really study the craft of fiction and poetry, I just wrote.  In my mind, I was just going to write and then send it all off.  I didn't know much about the process.  Didn't realize that it was such a different world.  Didn't really know what SASE meant…I just self addressed an envelope, but never included the stamp for the reply message…just dropped off that second S for some reason. 

For me, being rejected pushes me to continue to submit.  I’ve received 600-700 rejection letters.  My story Boatman’s Home was rejected 75 times before being accepted by Café Irreal.

            -Read rejection slips
            -Submit again based off of editor’s comments,
            -Find the right home for your work.
            -Find encouragement in rejection.

Journals I have submitted to the most, meaning, journals I've been rejected by the most, but I will continue to send to them:

            Fiction
            --Glimmer Train
            --AGNI (they just see my name and reject it!)
            -- Granta Magazine
            --Pedestal Magazine
            -- Night Train Magazine
            --Kenyon Review
            --Meridian
            --Hobart
            --Mid-American Review        

            Poetry
            --AGNI
            --Barrelhouse
            --Kenyon Review
            --Bellevue Literary Review
            --Jubilat
            --Meridian
            --Burnside Review
            --Paris Review
            --Pindeldboyz

Almost gotten to the point where I brag about who I've gotten rejected by.  “Oh yeah, they're a great journal, I've been rejected by them several times.” “who published that? Oh yeah, I love that press…I've been rejected by them a lot.”

Dear Shome Dasgupta,
Thanks for your letter - we cannot consider any new projects at this
point and wish you well in your career. Love your name!

- - -

Aimee Bender: “You have to really embrace your inner secretary and send out all the time, and get steeled to rejection notes. Keep working, working, working at your writing, and keep digging up your joys and horrors. And then it's tolerable.”

Judy Blume: "I would go to sleep at night feeling that I'd never be published. But I'd wake up in the morning convinced I would be. Each time I sent a story or book off to a publisher, I would sit down and begin something new. I was learning more with each effort. I was determined. Determination and hard work are as important as talent."
Judy Blume

Jane Yolen: "A writer never gets used to rejections. But if enough manuscripts are out there, each small rejection is less important. Less important? Well, each one hurts less."

Isaac Asimov: "I personally kick and scream, and there's no reason you shouldn't if it makes you feel better. However, once you're quite done with the kicking and screaming.”
 
Barbara Kingsolver: "This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address."

Irwin Shaw: "An absolutely necessary part of a writer's equipment, almost as necessary as talent, is the ability to stand up under punishment, both the punishment the world hands out and the punishment he inflicts upon himself."

Ray Bradbury: Fall in love and stay in love. Do what you love and nothing else. Don't look at the market, look into your heart and find what is there and put it down.

From Rejection Letters to well known authors:

Jorge Luis Borges                                                                                                     

'utterly untranslatable'

Anais Nin                                                                                                                                      

'There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic.'

Jack Kerouac            

 'His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation.  But is that enough?  I don't think so.'

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence                                                                                  

'for your own sake do not publish this book.'

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame                                                                           

'an irresponsible holiday story'

Lord of the Flies by William Golding                                                                                        

'an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.'

Watership Down by Richard Adams                                                                                                    

'older children wouldn't like it because its language was too difficult.'

On Sylvia Plath                                                                                                                        

'There certainly isn't enough genuine talent for us to take notice.'

The Deer Park by Norman Mailer                                                                                                          

'This will set publishing back 25 years.'

Carrie by Stephen King                                                                                                               

'We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias.  They do not sell.'

Catch – 22 by Joseph Heller                                                                                                             

‘I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.’

Animal Farm by George Orwell                                                                                                   

‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov                                                                    

overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy.  It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.’

Marcel Proust decided to self-publish after being rejected three times.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach was rejected 140 times before it was eventually published.
Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind was rejected 38 times.
Watership Down by Richard Adams: 26 rejections.
Frank Herbert's Dune was rejected nearly 20 times before being published.

"George Orwell, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and almost any writer you could name received rejection letters," points out Lulu's Bob Young. "Margaret Mitchell got rejection letters from 38 different publishers before anyone finally deigned to publish her novel, Gone With The Wind. How many talented writers are there who gave up without ever making it into print because of misguided rejection?"

I'm not saying that rejection is awesome, great, and one should strive for it, I'm saying it's  a natural process of writing, and you can't let it deter you from pursuing what you would like to pursue.  Can't let them get you down, you got to get after it.  It's a persistent mentality that's important, being a full-time hustler.

 -Shome Dasgupta  

SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE : issue #004