rejection
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Publishers Risk Losing Writers
Rude rejection letters could cost publishers the next big author, warns Hannah MacDonald, founder of September Publishing. MacDonald told colleagues at the FutureBook conference that publishers need to be kinder, reports The Independent: Hannah MacDonald said the industry should be…
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Famous Rejections Show Publishing’s Shortcomings
Rejection is often cited as an essential part of writing. Rejection is even celebrated, as if great works must be first overlooked and then pulled from obscurity. Consider Marlon James, 2015 Man Booker Prize winner: his first manuscript was rejected eighty times.…
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An Exercise in Failure
I did give it up. I actually destroyed the manuscript, I even went on my friends computers and erased it.” He said he retrieved the text by searching in the email outbox of an old iMac computer. Marlon James, who…
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Rejection Makes Us Writers
Writers are constantly being judged by their work, and naturally that means a regular stream of rejection. But not all rejections are bad. Over at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, JS Breukelaar looks back at past rejections and considers why rejection is sometimes…
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So You Think You Can Write?
A recent poll shows that the majority of Brits would choose the writing life as their ideal career. At the Guardian, Tim Lott isn’t sure they could handle it: To master dialogue, description, subtext, plot, structure, character, time, point of view, beginnings,…
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The Rumpus Interview with Wendy C. Ortiz
Wendy C. Ortiz talks about her memoir, Excavation, about her teenage affair with her teacher, and how the moment you write down a memory you make it fallible.
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Weekend Rumpus Roundup
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…
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Sunday Links
I 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…
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The Sunday Rumpus Essay: Get Rejected
In this excerpt from her new book How Not to Write, Lisa Carver explains why it’s good to get rejected.
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Beckett Resurrected
Even 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.
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We Respectfully Decline
At 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…
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Back to the Beginning: Why I Write
In the beginning the words flowed like honey, like maple syrup, like corn syrup; yes, the metaphors flowed just like that.