Tales from the Rejection Desk. . .

First of all, no, I did not get a rejection in the mail today. I got this from Margery and it just made me smile. Supposedly these are true stories about authors who were rejected.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English
language.” Editor of the San Fransciso Examiner to Rudyard Kipling.

Jean Auel, author of “The Clan of Cave Bear” was told, “We are very
impressed with the depth and scope of your research and the quality of
your prose. Nevertheless … we don’t think we could distribute enough
copies to satisfy you or ourselves.”

A letter rejecting “The Diary of Anne Frank” said, “The girl doesn’t, it
seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that
book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”

Even Dr. Seuss was not above the scathing rejection, “…too different
from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.”

We’ve all heard these stories before. They make us smile, they lift us above our own frustration from rejections. But what are the strangest things that have ever happened to you in a rejection? What things happened that made you say….”Ooookay…where did that one come from?” Or what was the most scathing rejection you’ve ever received, if you don’t mind sharing?

For me, I received a rejection from an agent…and my envelope contained a rejection letter for SOMEONE ELSE’S STORY. :confused2: Instead of Dear Michelle, it read something like:

Dear Bob:

We’re sorry, but Vampire Zombies from San Francisco is not a book that we would like to represent at this time. This, of course, is merely one opinion and we wish you the best of luck in your publishing career.

I frowned, scratched my head, and thought, “Dang! He wasted my stamp on this?” And who the heck is Bob??

I promptly wrote him a nice note back, enclosing the rejection and told him that I was withdrawing my work but I wished him the best of luck.

I was tempted to write:

Dear Agent:

I’m sorry, but your lack of organization tells me that I do NOT want you handling my future royalty checks.

P.S.–the IRS is watching you. Muhahahaha….:crazyjumping:

Bam! Kick it up a notch!

I have dreams of being the next Emeril. My husband and I were watching cooking shows today (don’t ask me WHY–he usually drools over Norm Abrams’ tools in New Yankee Workshop). Lately my cooking is improving, which is a good thing! I used to be a baker. Cookies, pies, cakes: those were my specialties. Roasts and actual meals? Fuhgeddaboutit. My mother wouldn’t let me near meat. The first time I attempted to make homemade Chinese food was a disaster. My husband walked in the apartment, sniffed, made a face, and said, “WHAT is that SMELL??”:confused:

Um…dinner, honey?

He ate grilled cheese. And I also believe he slept on the couch that night, too. :fryingpan:

It took nearly seven years of marriage for me to learn the intricacies of pleasing a Difficult Eater ™. My husband is one of those. No one ever told me that one of the tricky aspects of marriage is finding that fine balance between the way “his mother made it” and the way “my mother made it.” The first time I made him tomato soup, he nearly fainted dead away when I added water instead of milk. Uh, yeah…I was just following the directions on the can?

Now, I want some of those $400 knives. You know, the ones where the chefs can slice and dice onions at 100 mph without cutting their fingers off? I lust after those. :crazyjumping: I want to be able to have vegetables in those perfectly uniform cubes instead of the haphazard shredded masses that I manage with my $19.99 Farberware knives. Surely a $400 knife would do that for me.

I dream of having unusual ingredients in my cupboards like Orzo and hearts of palm instead of Cocoa Puffs and Uncle Ben’s.

Some day, I’ll know what it means to make a cheese sauce from scratch instead of microwaving Cheez Whiz.

I often feel that’s what my writing is like. I’m aiming for a delicate tomato and basil sandwich on grilled foccacia, sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan cheese. That’s the level I want my vocabulary and writing style to be.

Instead, I end up with a BLT on Wonder Bread with Hellman’s. :confused2:

That’s okay. Someday I’ll get there. In the meantime, here’s to kicking it up a notch! :beer:

Landscaping Lessons the Hard Way

When my husband and I first bought our house, we wanted one major thing–a yard for future kids to run around in. The problem was, although the backyard was large, it was doughnut-shaped with a ton of trees in the middle. For the first three years, we lived with it, tried to plant azaleas or tulips to make it pretty. But it always resembled a clump of the ugliest stick trees known to man. You know the kind–the ones that have no branches at all for the first twenty feet; then they have tiny little scrubby branches at the top. Ugly with a capital Ug.

So one day we decided to get rid of them. We called our tree removal specialists (aka Lumberjack Bob) and found that it wasn’t all that expensive to do the job. We removed 17 trees and opened up our yard. It amazes me what the difference became. We now have an airy, open yard with tons of space to put flowerbeds.

I am guilty of planting flowers and shrubs wherever I think they might look good instead of actually reading the tag. My engineer husband is obsessive over the location of the plants–”Honey, the sedum requires full sun, NOT shade. Move it 6.2475 inches to the left.” At which time, I whack him upside the head with the shovel.

No, seriously. He’s teaching me the ins and outs of landscaping. I’ve learned which plants do well in shade, which ones don’t, that spraying Round-up on my tomato plants instead of Bug-B-Gon is a BAD IDEA…you get the picture.

My grandmother is a gardening whiz. Just for your enjoyment, here’s what HER backyard looks like:

The Dreaded Thank You Notes

I am a bad person. I deserve to never get a present for as long as I live. My children both received birthday money from back in FEBRUARY, and I’m only now getting around to writing thank you notes.

What is it about thank you notes that hang over my head like an axe? I should be thrilled to whip out the lovely stationary, inscribe a thoughtful note to the sender and be grateful that they were thinking of us. And all I can think is—”Nooooo! Not more thank you notes! Shoot me now!” :rambo: :loser:

It would be different if thank you cards could be typed or e-mailed (I think Miss Manners has now passed out cold on the floor). I could whip out those suckers in no time flat. But true thank you cards require good penmanship, nice stationary, and your very best manners. My handwriting is TERRIBLE. My three-year-old’s crayon drawings are nicer. For me to sit down and scrawl something legible requires a lot of time. While I’m pondering the nicest way to say–it was so thoughtful of you to remember us–my one year old is trying to eat the power cords, and my son is finding new ways to climb the kitchen cupboards to get into the hidden candy stash (reserved for days of receiving rejections in the mail or for those PMS days where if your husband dares to mention that the kitchen floor is dirty, he’s gonna have to duck. :rambo:).

But I knocked out seven of those this morning. And tonight we’re going to grill ribs on the BBQ and laze around. . .

What do you think of Book in a Week?

Many of us have heard of the “Book in a Week” idea where you sit down and pound out the pages for a week or two until you have a finished rough draft. It’s scraggly, it’s ugly, but by golly you now have 300 pages or so of something to work with.

I think that only works if you know what’s going to happen. If you have the storylines all mapped out, the major turning points in mind, you can blast through it. But what if you don’t have a clue where you’re going? I don’t think it would work then. That’s my problem. I’m at the stage where I’m beginning to get a better grasp of pacing, to know that–for a 400 page medieval, I need to have a subplot, and the conflicts have to keep sharpening all the way to the end. But the strangest thing is, the more I write, the more I realize that I don’t need as much plot as I think I do.

Emotional plotting is a whole ‘nother animal. Taking two people who have no reason to love each other and getting them to the point where they can’t live without each other, takes 200 pages in and of itself. My early books had way too much plot. My newer books have less plot and more emotional intensity. But I still feel like I’m not quite there yet.

There’s also pacing of emotions. When I wrote my first book, my hero and heroine were lusting after each other on page 60. Ouch. Now, I’m trying to stretch that out, but in order to make it real, I have to have more emotional conflict. In short, the more I know, the more I realize how LITTLE I know. Sometimes you get it right, out of instinct. Other times, when you try to apply a formula–e.g., they won’t kiss until page 150, it just doesn’t work. I think the key is when you lose the author distance and you can get inside their heads. When you’re not just making up the story, but LIVING the story, that’s when the magic comes.

Then you sit back and think, how in the world did I write that?

Revenge of the Bad Similes Story!

I’ve always wanted to do one of those fun blog entries where everyone contributes a line or two of a story and we keep going until God only knows what we’ve come up with. Anyone wanna play? Yesterday’s adventures with the Rodale Synonym Finder gave me an idea.

Let’s make a really, really, BAD story. One with the WORST similes we can think of. The rules are simple. Write a line or two of the story but add a horrible simile to it. Feel free to add smilies.

I’ll start with a few lines:

He saw her from across the room, his eyes meeting hers for the first time like two strangers who have just been introduced. :confused2:

“Julia!” he called out, with the enthusiasm of a twelve-year-old about to see Episode III of Star Wars.:starwars:

“Get lost, Harold,” she retorted, like a woman squashing a bug beneath her steely boot. :fryingpan:

The next line is yours…

The Bronzed Hunky Warriors Strike Back

The revisions started picking up again yesterday. Which is wonderful, except I found myself chained to the thesaurus again. I’m beginning to wonder how multi-published authors manage to consistently come up with interesting ways to describe a hunky warrior. How many ways can you describe a sun-bronzed warrior with hardened muscles? Those hooded eyes, blazing with desire. :ick: You can’t toss around the same old cliche’s, but at the same time, how do you convince the reader that YES, this man is HOT, and you will want to nibble him all over. I needed some new ways, so off I trotted to Rodale’s Synonym Finder:

Bronze: metallic-brown, rust, rust-colored, copper, copper-colored, henna.
Hooded: cowl, capuche, mantilla, veil, coif, wimple, cap, bonnet, hat, kerchief…etc.

Okay, here we go. Shouldn’t be too hard if we toss in a few new descriptions.

Patrick stood before her, his rust-colored muscles flexing in the firelight. His bonneted eyes hungered with desire.

Doesn’t quite work, does it? Of course, I could say:
Patrick leaned against the wall, his warrior’s body so hard and delectable, she wanted to lick him like the last bite of cookie dough in the bowl.

Something tells me this won’t work for a medieval. :fryingpan:

I was tagged a few days ago, so I guess I’d better get around to answering the questions:
Number of books I own: I’ve never counted, but probably in the neighborhood of 400-500, mostly romance.
Last Book I Bought: A Loving Scoundrel by Johanna Lindsey
Last Book I Read: When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn
5 Books that Mean a Lot to Me: Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel; A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley; Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer; A Place To Call Home by Deborah Smith; and Born in Fire by Nora Roberts. I’ve probably read them about 30 billion times each.
I’m not going to tag anyone because some people get annoyed, but if you want to share your own answers, feel free!

Let’s all have an identity crisis together!

The last day of school is still 16 days away for me. :hissyfit: My students have already “checked out of the hotel.” They don’t care anymore. If they do their homework, great. If not, they really don’t care. Grades? :ick: They’re almost done, so what does it matter if they drop a letter grade? As a teacher, it makes me want to screech like a banshee and scream–YOU’RE NOT DONE YET!!! :rambo: But in reality, what can I do? They’ve already made that decision.

As for me, those sixteen days (and if your kids are already out of school: :angry: ) have become a sort of count-down. Every year when I reach the summertime, I switch writing modes. I go from 2-3 pages a day to 12-15 pages a day, if possible. I love it. I become a writing machine, gleefully flying through a new book. Then I take a month to edit, and I enjoy the thrill of submission.

Only this month, I’ve started having my little identity crisis. My 120-page Victorian romp novel where the heroine threatens to poison the hero if he comes near her? Can’t do that if I’m going to focus on medievals. And as for my medievals, I have two distinct writing voices. One is fluffy and fun. The other is dark and moody. Depending on the plotline, I switch voices. This is not a good thing. Both are aspects of my personality, but I need to stick to one.

It’s a bit like choosing a career for the second time. I never chose teaching–teaching chose me. I got a random part-time job out of nowhere, to direct a children’s choir. After that, I was hooked. I do believe I’m in the right daytime occupation, and I love the antics of middle schoolers. [Quick side-story: One of my students couldn’t understand why he missed a true/false question. The question? True or False–Kennedy was assassinated while in office. The kid marked False. “But he was shot in the streets of Dallas, not in his office!!” :banghead: :goodvibes: Sorry. Couldn’t resist sharing that one.]

Anyhoo…right now, I’m at a major turning point of my career. Whatever I decide, I’m going to write three or four books in that subgenre. The advantage is that I’ll learn my craft within the subgenre very well. The disadvantage? I lose my love of variety. I suppose that’s discipline for you.

Why Revisions are Harder than Sawing off your leg with a Butter Knife

I’m stealing Larissa’s butter knife analogy.

Last night I tried to immerse myself in the book, to really make sure each scene counted, that each bit of dialogue sparkled. After about two hours of work, I had revised exactly . . . a page and a half. Kinda makes you want to go saw off your leg with a butter knife.

Why is it revisions are so much harder than writing new pages? On a good day, I can write 12-15 pages in two hours. But when I have to analyze every sentence, every character thought, every verb, it’s excruciatingly slow. I found a scene that, while it was well-written, it served no purpose in the book. It had the OPPORTUNITY to be useful, but there wasn’t enough there. I had to decide–do I cut the scene out, or do I add what’s needed to make it advance the plot? :banghead:

I made a printable (you print out a few chapters in landscape formatting, single spaced, and make it appear like a real book), which always helps me to see the bigger picture. But the more I get into these revisions, the more I see how much work there is to be done.

There is a bright side to this. It means that I’ve come a long way in my writing. I knew, when I wrote that book, that there were some serious flaws, but I didn’t have the skills to fix them. I also couldn’t quite tell what the problems were.

Makes me kind of wonder what flaws I’ll see in my recent books. :confused2:

In any case, this is one of those days when I remember why it’s so tough to be an author. In order to make it in this business, you have to be willing to find the right words, edit the wrong ones, and do whatever it takes to make the story real. ‘Scuse me while I go find a machete to hack away at some more chapters…

Which is harder for you? Revisions or new pages?:typing:

The Toy Relocation Program

What is it with toddlers and their possessions? They pick up a toy and carry it with them religiously around the house. Balls, coloring book pages, legos, blocks, magnetic letters, stuffed animals….and inevitably, they end up placing their toys in every freaking room in the house!! :banghead:

Can you tell, I’m a wee bit stressed about getting the house cleaned? :hissyfit: It’s a never-ending process. I pick up one room, go onto another, and while I’m cleaning, the kids relocate more toys to the once-clean room. It’s like an exodus of toys–moving them from one room into the next. :crazyjumping:

I personally think it’s a mark of ownership, like dogs peeing on a tree. The toddler claims every room as his territory by staking out toys and playthings there.

Thought I’d share this, for all you moms. You can probably relate.

The Toddler’s Creed: :blahblah:

If I want it, it is mine.
If I give it to you and change my mind later, it is mine.
If I can take it away from you, it is mine.
If it is mine, it will never belong to anyone else, no matter what.
If we are building something together, all the pieces are mine.
If it looks just like mine, it is mine.
(source unknown)