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Join NOW!First, say hello to our new Saturday media editor, Arielle Bernstein! Then, in “All The World’s A Stage,” Grant Snider neatly illustrates our inner performer. Poet Kent Shaw marvels at the “glandular muscularity” of water as a theme in Harmony Holiday’s dual book, A Famous Blues/Go Find Your Father. Jazz voicing accentuates the father/daughter relationship at […]
...moreI find Lisa Carver’s bracing words about rejection fun to read but painful to put in practice. Here’s some scientific proof that rejection physically hurts. What makes me feel better about rejection? Reading about how it was meted out to writers I admire. This site’s a gold mine. Seeing the numbers of rejections juxtaposed with […]
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In this excerpt from her new book How Not to Write, Lisa Carver explains why it’s good to get rejected.
...moreEven a writer as great as Samuel Beckett faced some rejection. “Echo’s Bones,” a rejected short story from Beckett’s early days, has just been released. NPR spoke with Beckett scholar Mark Nixon to find out the story behind the story.
...moreAt Guernica, Alexandria Peary observes a fine but lethal distinction between being declined and being rejected, a difference that had very real effects on the literary ambitions of nineteenth-century female writers. While to decline a submission implies thoughtful deliberation over that particular work, rejection is an all-encompassing denouncement of something larger: a category or, in this […]
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In the beginning the words flowed like honey, like maple syrup, like corn syrup; yes, the metaphors flowed just like that.
...moreThrice Fiction editor RW Spryszak has some advice for writers: rejection isn’t personal. Sending hate mail to editors is no way to get published. Writers may resent changes that editors request, but it’s all part of the process: Writers need to have the perspective to understand that most editors in the small press world also […]
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In what job other than writing must you seek out frequent and concrete rejection? Okay, fine, but go get your own self-pitying rant.
...more“Then again, you might not be the funny type. How about making the rejection letter poignant, depressing, or even hurtful? Push the envelope. Your audience is a bunch of bored writers begging for a little drama in their pathetic lives. Never be sort of poignant! Depress and hurt the fuck out of somebody! (Don’t be afraid to use profanity!) […]
...more“The Rejection Generator rejects writers before an editor looks at a submission. Inspired by psychological research showing that after people experience pain they are less afraid of it in the future, The Rejection Generator helps writers take the pain out of rejection.” Here’s a handy tool to support “rejection immunity” and ease the fear of […]
...more“… Professor Sandel says a “philosophically frank” university should tell those it rejects that “we don’t regard you as less deserving than those who were admitted” and that “it is not your fault that when you came along society happened not to need the qualities you had to offer.” In a similar vein, those accepted […]
...moreThe book blogs are full of awesome this week. You should read them. How to write to an editor: “I have given your request for evidence 23 hours of thought, the proper number of hours to come up with the right proof. I have sent you the original life experiences behind the proem telepathically just […]
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