Not more communism but more public-spirited pigs: how to handle rejection letters

Isaac Asimov called rejection notes “lacerations of the soul”

The Wind in the Willows: “an irresponsible holiday story that will never sell”

Journalism is not an entirely wise choice of career if you actually want to write books, but one thing it does usefully teach you is how to develop a thick skin. In my capactity as global represetative for the fourth estate I’ve been compared to Nazi footsoldiers (by a parish councillor in East Yorkshire), accused of killing Princess Diana (on a stag night in London), and given articles about Friends to sub based entirely on my advanced age (remotely, in a comfy chair at home). It’s all been useful preparation for psyching myself up to make a book pitch, or rather psyching myself up to have a book pitch rejected.

Like literally every other writer, dealing with rejection comes with the job. There’s obviously some element of being rebuffed in many occupations, but there’s something really very personal about somebody taking a brief look at something you’ve been working on for months, something you really believe in, something that could bring you fame and cold hard cash, and saying: “Er, no, not for us.” And that’s just the ones who actually reply. My personal favourite, one of the few I’ve kept, was the chap who scribbled on the top of the returned manuscript “This is not a book.” He kindly added a coffee ring on the front page, maybe to drive the point home. Nice.

I’ve no great tips to pass on about how to deal with people hating your idea so much that they don’t want to work with you, but as with so many aspects of life, time is a great teacher and healer. I’m less upset now when nobody seems to want my great book about novelty architecture (it’s a great book, it is, and if you’re an agent or a publisher reading this, please get in touch, I’ve got a pitch all ready to whizz out to you today, maybe sooner). Still it does hurt. I do understand that, deluged by manuscripts, publishers and agents send out many, many rejection letters – even to ideas as marvellous as novelty architecture - but hindsight does offer writers the reassurance that sometimes the joke is on the gatekeepers.

Moby-Dick: Always was a whale

It’s a great story but sadly also an urban legend that Herman Melville was turned down by publishers Bentley & Son with the line: "First, we must ask, does it have to be a whale?”. Nor is it true that Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind was rejected 38 times. Or indeed even once. However, while admitting that it is “a distinguished piece of writing… very skilfully handled”, TS Eliot did put it to George Orwell that Animal Farm was probably too much political dynamite for Faber to publish. He also made the intriguing plot criticism that it was a good thing that intelligent porkers were in charge of the farm and that “what was needed, (someone might argue), was not more communism but more public-spirited pigs.” Would look good on a t-shirt too.

Many writers can look back in laughter. “Stick to your teaching, Miss Alcott,” publisher James Fields rather pompously advised the author of Little Women. “You can’t write.” Meanwhile, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame was turned down on the basis that it was “an irresponsible holiday story that will never sell”.

Of course there are rejections and rejections, some – though still likely to make the decisionmaker wince in retrospect - letting down the writer more gently than others. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was give the thumbs down by Cape who said that: “It does not seem to us that you have been wholly successful in working out an admittedly promising idea”, but then sugarcoating the rejection by suggesting that Golding send it to another publisher, André Deutsche, instead.

Nor are literary agents exempt. “The first agent I ever queried sent back a slip saying 'My list is full. The folder you sent wouldn't fit in the envelope’,” tweeted JK Rowling in 2015 in response to a query about waiting nervously from potential agents, latter joking:

J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling

.@nosystranger I now have over a million folders, all made of costly silks, each one hand-gilded by artisans in Paris. #JK

If you’re still waiting to get a break, don’t give up, do keep going. You can’t get too blue about rejection letters, somebody will take a punt on you. Kurt Vonnegut is something of a hero in this respect since the Slaughterhouse-Five writer kept many of the rejection slips for his short stories from magazines in an old red box marked ‘Fine Candies’. Among them is one from The Atlantic Monthly in 1949 suggesting that his piece on the wartime destruction of Dresden – which he experienced first hand on the ground – had “drawn commendation” from the magazine’s staff but nevertheless was “not quite compelling enough.” Another from Collier’s magazine for his short story Mnemonics says: “this story has a good and serious idea but is worked out in superficial and insufficient terms which make it flat and inconsequential.” There were so many rejection letters that Vonnegut’s wife Jane exhibited a healthy disrespect for them and decorated a waste basket with them.

And that manuscript of mine that wasn’t a book? Well, actually it did become one. So nuts to you, Mr Stinker.

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