Rejections
are part of every writer’s life. I know I personally have enough to wallpaper
the walls of my office. How about you?
Often
they become very tiresome and discouraging, but keep your chin up, as what
I’m about to tell you may just keep you from throwing in the towel when you
feel as if you’ve had one rejection too many.
Many
famous writers have done just this. But thankfully, they didn’t listen to
all those negative reviews and rejections. If they had, we wouldn’t have their
wonderful works today.
Here
are some rejections and reviews you just have to hear:
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair 1906
His reasoning is so false, his disregard of human nature so naïve, his
statement of facts so biased, his conclusions so perverted, that the effect
can be only to disgust many honest, sensible folk with the very terms he
uses so glibly.”— The Bookman
He was also told that it was “only
fit for the wastebasket.”
Or
how about this one?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare Performed in London,
1662
“ The most insipid, ridiculous play that I ever saw in my life.”
— Samuel Pepys, Diary
(Or this one on William Shakespeare)
“Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly
too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever.
He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic
shape, at as little expense of thought as you or
I could turn his plays back again into prose tales.”—Lord Byron, letter to James Hogg1814
Hamlet
William Shakespeare, 1601
“It is a vulgar and barbarous drama, which
would not be tolerated by the vilest populace of
France,
or Italy …one
would imagine this piece to be the work of a drunken savage.”—Voltaire,
in The Works of M. De Voltaire
Alright, so I feel better already. No reviewer
has ever called my writing that of a drunken savage. (Or
at least, not that I know of.) That one made me smile. Actually, bad
critiques continued for Shakespeare in other of his works such as King
Lear, Othello, Antony andCleopatra,
(referred to as bogus characterization), Julius Ceasar
and even Romeo and Juliet which the reviewer said was the worst play
he’d ever seen in his life.
Hmm. So
maybe our reviews and rejections aren’t seeming so
bad anymore? This man went through lots, but yet it did not break his spirit.
And how about the classic tale
of Moby Dick by Herman Melville, 1851. The reviewers
called it, “so much trash belonging to the worst school
of Bedlam literature…”
They laid into Edgar Allan Poe with comments
such as, “We require some kind of spiritual ablution to cleanse our minds
of his disgusting images,” and “He was not human and manly.”
In 1889, the San Francisco Examiner
sent a rejection letter to Rudyard Kipling, telling him he did not
know how to use the English Language.
The reviewers attacked Hemingway’s,For Whom The Bell
Tolls, 1940, and also went on to say, “It is of course a commonplace that
Hemingway lacks the serene confidence that he is a full-sized man.” – Max
Eastman, New Republic
I’m not sure about that last one, but I don’t
imagine any of us has had a review calling us full-sized women! Or at least
I’d hope not.
The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
“Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald deserves
a good shaking … The Great Gatsby is an absurd story, whether considered
as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York
high life.” – Saturday Review of Literature
Okay, if anyone reviewed me and said I needed a good shaking, I think I’d
want to shake them.
Stephen King received rejections on Carrie. One said, “We are
not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They
do not sell.”
Oh really? Little did they know, huh? Stephen through that book
in a drawer for nine years after that. Good thing he didn’t give up. I’ve
heard he’d even thrown it in the fire and his wife saved it, though I’m not
sure if that’s true or not.
Agatha Christie was told
that The Mysterious Affair At Styles, 1920was not suitable for a publisher’s list.
Mary Higgins Clark was rejected on Journey Back To
Love, 1962, with “We found the heroine as boring as her husband
had.”
Okay, I’ve never had one of my heroines called boring, and I’m
glad. Usually, mine are much too bold.
And how about The Fountainhead
by Ayn Rand, 1943? She was told, “This
is a work of almost-genius – genius in the power of its expression – almost
in the sense of its enormous bitterness. I wish there were an audience for
a book of this kind. But there isn’t. It won’t sell.”
So where’s that editor today? Doesn’t he/she know that this book
is STILL on the shelves in bookstores and selling good 60 years later?
And for all of you writers out there who have been told, “NO TALKING
ANIMALS,” how about George Orwell’s Animal Farm, 1945, that
most of us remember reading in high school? He was told “It is impossible
to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.”
I guess that editor had no idea talking pigs such as Babe and
a talking mouse such as Stuart Little would hit it
big. So much for that opinion!
And I’m going to finish up with my favorite.
Dr. Seuss, 1937was told this about his book And
To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street.
“…too
different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.”
Doesn’t it seem here that “different” is exactly what made these people successes?
Don’t give up. Ever. Keep on writing,
keep on trying. Have faith, and it will happen for you. After all, these famous
authors did, and look where it got them.
Elizabeth Rose
*Excerpts taken from Rotten Reviews
& Rejections edited by Bill Henderson & Andre Bernard.
