Thursday, April 19, 2007

Rejection

A sucky fact of life - from dating, to job interviewing, to publishing - we all have to deal with rejection at some point or another.

Here's a helpful instructional video to ease the writer's blues. You may want to have pen and paper handy to take notes.

Rejection Letter Response

15 comments:

Susan Miller said...

Lovely.

Sidney said...

That's great!

SQT said...

What did he call the guy? Pisshead?

Love it.

RK Sterling said...

I really liked this - he's so cute too. *grin*

Sqt, I believe he called him a "piss midget."

Ah, British humor. lol

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

I laughed out loud. This is priceless. I'm thinking of sending some responses of my own.

You know, Kate, I don't even consider acceptance as an option. When I send something out, it is a given that it will find its way back to me. I try and numb the pain that way.

And yes, it was piss midget. PISS MIDGET. Any way you say that phrase is hilarious.

RK Sterling said...

Well, I'm hoping to soon have the option of accepting you, Stewart. That way I can get a leg up on all those editors who deserve death by flugelhorn. They'll be sorry when I start churning out the next JK Rowlings. :)

(Still working on that publishing company - talked to a potential partner about it day before yesterday)

Charles Gramlich said...

Funny as hell.

Stewart Sternberg (half of L.P. Styles) said...

Well, if you get your publishing company up and running, I'll be happy to let you look over DARK HAVEN, a horror novel about a haunting in a domestic violence shelter. I am in the process of revision now, then the chapter by chapter outline for a proposal, followed by the synopsis and cover letter. GOD..the writing part is wonderful, but the editing, and re editing, and the other stuff. SHEESH.

SQT said...

Ooooh, piss midget. That's much funnier.

Susan Miller said...

Hey, girl...I saw your comment on Charles' blog regarding your daughter's skipping school and her resulting dismissive attitude.

Not that it means anything but I skipped 32 days of my junior year in high school. It's actually a pretty good story BUT the only reason I'm telling you is because of what my father said the day he found out. I'll never forget it; it still rings true for me today and was a seriously chilling moment for me.

This time he didn't call me "Boog".

We were sitting at the kitchen table. Tears of please don't beat me or kill me were rolling down my face. He was stoic and just stared at me.

In a steady voice he finally said, "You are sixteen years old. I have spent the last sixteen years giving you the tools that you will need in this world. It's up to you to decide if you will use those tools or not. Anything you do from now on is about your decision, your choice. Understand?"

All I could think was beat me please. Don't make me responsible. Let's just say considering I had to ride the bus my senior year, a long ride from the country with my little brothers throwing spitballs at me, he was still making some decisions...but I started learning that day about not being a victim of anyone or anything but myself. Children of divorce will play that card as long as they can. Most anyone would and some people still do.

Gotta go to work. I do feel your pain.

Anonymous said...

Piss Midget!! And I thought I'd heard of every derogatory name out there.

I have a friend who's currently submitting and he's being beaten down by these nasty letters. He's a very reasonable person who went into it with expectations of rejection, but I don't think he expected the level of snipe some of the publishers will stoop to in their letters.

Stewart -- I wanna read that book! It's funny, I love the editing part; it suits my obsessive personality just fine. My issues are with the query letter and synopsis -- the first because I'm not sure I can be charming and persuasive enough, the second because the story is complicated and I'm very verbose and I'm not sure how to wrangle it into one page.

RK Sterling said...

SUSAN - I'm sure you and I would have gotten along well in high school. I skipped 40 days my senior year. BUT, here's the thing - I still graduated with honors. If my daughter was at least keeping her grades up, I wouldn't mind so much, but that's not the case.

I did tell her some time back that I didn't want to give up on her, but I was about ready to. That seemed to effect pretty deeply at the time. I guess it's time to play the responsibility card. :) Thanks for sharing your story.

AVERY - I love the editing too. Like you, the queries and synopses send shivers down my spine. I think the "back cover blurb" is the worst author torture ever devised. I just want to scream, "Don't ask me what it's about, read it and find out!"

Steve Malley said...

I *love* that clip. It's from a show called Black Books, and the Dynamo also swoons over Mister Dylan Moran.

Thing is, I've watched all three seasons many times and still can't figure out where they did that bit!
It's driving me nuts...

And for what it's worth, I got my acceptance letter to uni in October of my senior year and, um, didn't go anymore.

Susan Miller said...

We would have had a BLAST!!!!

RK Sterling said...

Steve, I'd never even heard of Dylan Moran or Black Books before I saw this clip; now I'm devouring everythign I can find. :)

Susan - ain't it the truth! :)