Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.

-Rejection letter to Dr. Seuss

 

 

 

 

12

# of times Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was rejected

 

 

 

 

 

 

We feel that we don’t know the central character well enough.

-Rejection letter to J.D. Salinger

 

 

 

 

 

 

27

# of times Dr. Seuss's first book was rejected

 

 

 

 

 

 

I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

-Rejection letter to Vladimir Nabokov

 

 

 

 

 

 

30

# of times Stephen King's first novel was rejected

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hopelessly bogged down and unreadable.

-Rejection letter to Ursula K. Le Guin

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once a week for 4 years 

How often Alex Haley would receive a rejection for Roots (208 total rejections)

 

 

 

 

 

 

An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.

-Rejection letter to William Golding

 

 

 

 

 

 

350

# of times Louis L'Amour was rejected before selling his first story

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too radical of a departure from traditional juvenile literature.

-Rejection letter to L. Frank Baum

 

 

 

 

 

 

660

# of times Jack London was rejected before selling his first story

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frenetic and scrambled prose.

-Rejection letter to Jack Kerouac

 

 

 

 

 

 

774

# of times John Creasy was rejected before selling his first story (he would go on to publish 564 books)

 

 

 

 

 

 

An endless nightmare. I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book.'

-Rejection letter to H.G. Wells

 

 

 

 

 

 

7000

# of rejection slips William Soroyan recieved before selling his first story

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our united opinion is entirely against the book. It is very long, and rather old-fashioned.

-Rejection letter to Herman Melville

 

 

 

 

 

 

11

# of years Charles Bukowski worked in a post office to support his writing habit

 

 

 

 

 

 

An absurd story as romance, melodrama or record of New York high life.

-Rejection letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

 

 

 

 

5

# of years it took Gustave Flaubert to write Madame Bovary

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stick to teaching.

-Rejection letter to Louisa May Alcott

 

 

 

 

 

 

3

# of years Nathaniel Hawthorne worked in a custom house

 

 

 

 

 

 

I haven’t the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say. Apparently the author intends it to be funny.

-Rejection letter to Joseph Heller

 

 

 

 

 

 

57

Age at which Annie Proulx published her first novel

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

-Rejection letter to Stephen King

 

 

 

 

 

 

72

Age at which Katherine Anne Porter published her first and only novel, Ship of Fools

 

 

 

 

 

Utterly untranslatable.

-Rejection letter to Jorge Luis Borges

 

 

 

 

 

 

74

Age at which Norman Maclean wrote A River Runs Through It

 

 

 

 

 

 

I rack my brains why a chap should need thirty pages to describe how he turns over in bed before going to sleep.

-Rejection letter to Marcel Proust

 

 

 

 

 

 

379

# of copies Dubliners sold in its first year of publication; 120 of these were purchased by James Joyce himself

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good God, I can’t publish this.

-Rejection letter to William Faulkner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.”

—Margaret Atwood

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy 

against the cultivation of his talent."

—James Baldwin

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We [writers] must know that we can never escape the common misery and that our only justification, if indeed there is a justification, is to speak up, insofar as we can, for those who cannot do so.”

—Albert Camus

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.”

—Anne Lamott

 

 

 

 

 

 

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

—Thomas Mann

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Not writing at all leads to nothing.”

—Anna Quindlen

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

 

 

 

 

“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.”

—Irwin Shaw

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” 

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. … It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”

— Enid Bagnold

 

 

 

 

 

 

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

— Ernest Hemingway

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.”

— Jim Tully

 

 

 

 

 

 

"A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it IS to be God."

— Sidney Sheldon

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer."

— Barbara Kingsolver

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."

— E. L. Doctorow

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good."

— William Faulkner

 

 

 

 

 

 

"If there's a book you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet then you must write it."

— Toni Morrison

 

 

 

 

 

 

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”

—Richard Bach