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Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach 140 rejections
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo 397 rejections (and it became a film) - (Wow - she was persistent!)
Watership Down by Richard Adams 26 rejections
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle 97 rejections (and it won the Newbery Medal for best children's book of 1963; it's now in its 69th printing)
Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson 40 rejections (and it has won multiple awards and sold 150,000 hard copies).
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot 17 rejections
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell 38 rejections
Dune by Frank Herbert 20 rejections
etc etc
Rejections are demoralizing, painful and hard to take. The best advice someone gave me after my book had been rejected by 10 publishers was, "believe in yourself and get on and write the next."
I took the advice, and was able to escape the feeling of failure (even if only temporarily) by immersing myself in a new imaginative world. It didn't make the rejections go away but by the time the next book was half-way done, the first had found its publisher.
Statistics are pinched from the excellent writing website of Mary Carroll Moore:
http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com/
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This is just the sort of posting which brings joy to my heart and makes me feel like I'm not alone... Rejection, every great writer has been there, done that, and got the T'shirt...:-)
ReplyDeleteHi Jamara, most people have multiple T shirts!:)
ReplyDeleteSo glad you posted this; this is exactly what many of us writers need to hear for inspiration.
ReplyDelete