What? Super Famous Authors Get Rejection Letters, Too?

At the annual Florida SCBWI Mid-Winter Conference held in Miami this past weekend, much was discussed concerning rejection letters, collected by most every author known to humanity.  This author certainly has had her share!  It seems fitting, then, to do a post on famous authors who have fallen prey to the same malady.  Have fun! 

GEORGE ORWELL

It seems Alfred Knopf didn’t always understand satire. Animal Farm, the famed dystopian allegory that later became an AP Reader standard and Retrospective Hugo Award winner, was turned down because it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” A British publishing firm initially accepted and later rejected the work as well, arguing that “…the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offense to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.”

 GERTRUDE STEIN

A shockingly nasty letter, I can only imagine how Ms. Stein reacted to this missive from Arthur C. Fifield with her manuscript for Three Lives: “Being only one, having only one pair of eyes, having only one time, having only one life, I cannot read your MS three or four times. Not even one time. Only one look, only one look is enough. Hardly one copy would sell here. Hardly one. Hardly one.” Twenty years later, Stein’sThe Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas became her one and only best-seller.

 STEPHEN KING

Most fans know that King’s big break came with Carrie, the story of a friendless, abused girl with secret telekinetic powers. Though one publishing house told him they were “not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias.  They do not sell,” Doubleday picked up the paperback rights to the novel and sold more than a million copies in its first year.

 WILLIAM GOLDING

Lord of the Flies was a favorite of so many high-school students, some publishers disagreed. One agent called the classic “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.” To date, the book has been required reading in high schools for nearly fifty years, 14.5 million copies have been sold, and Golding’s work has been adapted for film twice.

 MARY HIGGINS CLARK

Back in 1966, the young romance author was trying to sell a story she called “Journey Back to Love.” It didn’t go well, however; her submission to Redbook came back with a rejection from the editors, stating "We found the heroine as boring as her husband had." Ouch! The piece was eventually run as a two-part serial in an English magazine, and Mary Higgins Clark currently boasts forty-two bestselling novels.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett-A Study in Pre-Civil Rights Mississippi Women

Talk about rejection and redemption!  Kathryn Stockett, author of the bestselling book, and now highly successful movie, The Help, received 60 rejection letters over 3 and a half years—and still didn’t give up. Good thing she didn’t.

(Be sure to view the film's trailer at bottom of post.)

The Help is a rich treatise on growing up in Mississippi.  It is written from the perspective of a white woman from the South who writes from the viewpoint of African-American maids. 

The book deals with the complicated relationships between African-American domestic servants and the white women who employed them.  Set in pre-civil rights Mississippi, the book  has spent over 30 weeks on the New York Times' best-seller list.

In the author's own words:

...A few months later, I sent it to a few more agents. And received a few more rejections. Well, more like 15. I was a little less giddy this time, but I kept my chin up. “Maybe the next book will be the one,” a friend said. Next book? I wasn’t about to move on to the next one just because of a few stupid letters. I wanted to write this book.

A year and a half later, I opened my 40th rejection: “There is no market for this kind of tiring writing.” That one finally made me cry. “You have so much resolve, Kathryn,” a friend said to me. “How do you keep yourself from feeling like this has been just a huge waste of your time?”

That was a hard weekend. I spent it in pajamas, slothing around that racetrack of self-pity—you know the one, from sofa to chair to bed to refrigerator, starting over again on the sofa. But I couldn’t let go of The Help. Call it tenacity, call it resolve or call it what my husband calls it: stubbornness.

After rejection number 40, I started lying to my friends about what I did on the weekends. They were amazed by how many times a person could repaint her apartment. The truth was, I was embarrassed for my friends and family to know I was still working on the same story, the one nobody apparently wanted to read.

Aside from being an interesting vignette about a tenacious woman who believed in her story and wouldn't let go of that belief, it is also a cautionary tale for authors and authors-in-waiting.  We write from our hearts.  We write because we have to write.  And we receive rejections.  And that can be demoralizing.  But we  cannot give up on our dream.  We should not give up our dream.  Indeed, from Kathryn Stockett's amazing journey,  let's all take heart and laugh (at least, try to) in the face of "those letters."