More on Surviving Rejection: Excerpt from my book: A Friendly Guide to Writing and Ghostwriting

When the King of Horror, Stephen King, was starting out, he stuck his rejection letters on a nail on the wall. “By the time I was fourteen,” he said, “the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

You don't have to look far to find examples of rejected books that have become classics, written by people who were told to keep their day jobs. Before he was a bestselling writer many times over, Stephen King was a janitor, a gas pump attendant, and a worker at an industrial laundry. His first novel, Carrie, was rejected by thirty publishers. He was living in a trailer with his wife and two kids at the time, and he was so discouraged, he threw the manuscript into the trash. Luckily for him, his wife, Tabitha, retrieved the book and urged him to keep working on it. Carrie was eventually published and made into a blockbuster movie, marking the beginning of Stephen King’s long and successful writing career.

 If you want to get published someday, take a lesson from Mr. King. Expect rejection. Use the letters to wallpaper your bathroom and remind you that you're actively moving toward your goal. At least you’re getting your work out there. Whatever happens, it’s crucial that you don’t take it personally. I know that’s easier said than done, but there are no criteria by which to measure how someone else will feel about your work. You send it out, you hold your breath, and after what feels like an eon, you may get offered a book deal. Anything is possible.

More likely, you’ll get some form of a dreaded rejection letter:

“It’s too long.” Or “It's too short."

“It isn't for this publishing house.”

“It's a wonderful book but it doesn't fit into our lists.”

“I just bought a similar book. Good luck in placing this with someone else.”

Or:

“This book is the worst thing I’ve ever read. I suggest you scrap it before you embarrass yourself any further.”

They might return it in the self-addressed stamped envelope you included with an off-handed comment like, “Good night and good luck.”

I once lived across the street from an executive at Paramount Studios whose claim to infamy was that he had passed on Gone with the Wind. It was eventually picked up by MGM, we all know what happened after that, and years later, this man still winces at the mere mention of the golden ticket that he turned down. Just remember that agents and publishers make mistakes.

Back in 1988, I wrote a novel based on a dear friend who died of AIDS. I described the stigma, how the gay community was targeted, how much people suffered and the terror of the death sentence that an HIV diagnosis heralded at the time. I also wrote about dealing with loss and grief in the wake of this global epidemic. The book was a labor of love that helped me process the pain I was feeling. It was current and it reflected the fear, disbelief, and havoc perpetrated by this terrible illness that was taking the lives of so many of my young friends. I felt good about my book but when I submitted it to a recommended agent, she called me and said, “Your story is really strange. If you could change AIDS to cancer, it would be much better.”

She may not have liked my writing or my book but to suggest it should be about something else was off base. And not uncommon. Many years later, when I finished writing my book called Memoirs of a Ghost, a woman whom I thought was intelligent told me, “I really liked it but you should take out the ghostwriting part.”

I wasn’t the first person to be dealt that kind of uninformed, insulting suggestion. Back in the 1920s, when a publisher read The Great Gatsby, he told F. Scott Fitzgerald, “You'd have a decent book if you'd get rid of that Gatsby character.”

Agents like to tell a writer that a publisher “passed on your book” instead of calling it a rejection. They’re trying to soften the blow, but whatever you call it, it’s a difficult and deeply unpleasant experience that breaks your heart and can leave you feeling badly about yourself. When I was searching for an agent for my first non-fiction book based on my healing research, one nasty rejection stands out. The phone rang, I answered it, and when I heard an agent’s voice at the other end of the line, I got excited. I’d been told that an agent doesn't call a writer unless she’s interested in the book. I was wrong. She yelled into the phone, “Your topic is not believable and your writing is unsophisticated. Why on earth did you write this? Everybody thinks they've written a great book. Everybody thinks they have a bestseller.”

“We have to believe in ourselves,” I said. “How else can we keep on writing?”

I hung up the phone and climbed into bed. I spent one full day feeling sorry for myself and the next morning, I got up and started all over again. Lamenting a rejection is human, but giving it more than twenty-four hours is indulgent and does nothing to further your pursuit. After several years of searing rejections, I finally got a deal with a major publisher and my writing career took off.

I’m so glad I hung in there. What if some of our most beloved writers gave up? We’d be deprived of classic books that have delighted us and changed our lives. When I was complaining about my work being passed over, my sister, Jill, sent me a gift. It was a book by Andre Bernard and Bill Henderson called Rotten Reviews and Rejections: A History of Insult. I scanned the pages that were filled with multiple rejection letters sent to bestselling authors. Reading them helped me. The examples below might help you, too. 

Ernest Hemingway received the following letter from a publisher when he submitted his manuscript, The Sun Also Rises:

“If I may be frank – you certainly are in your prose, I found your efforts to be tedious and offensive. You really are a man’s man, aren’t you? I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that you had penned this entire story locked up at the club, ink in one hand, brandy in another. Your bombastic, dipsomania, where-to-now characters had me reaching for my own glass of brandy.”

Vladimir Nabokov who wrote Lolita, got the following letter:

“. . . 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 day dream . . . I recommend it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.”

Louis L’Amour’s novels were rejected 200 times before a publisher took a chance on him. When he died in 1988, he had sold three hundred thousand books.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter was rejected so many times, she decided to self-publish. It has sold 45 million copies to date.

Bestselling mystery writer, Agatha Christie, got turned down for five years before she found a publisher for her first book. Her subsequent books went on to sell in excess of two billion copies.