Share your rejection stories, /lit/. Can be stories, novels,

I wrote a book and sent like 40 queries out, and they were all rejected.

>>9053384
my mom read my diary desu and kicked me out of the house

>>9053384
For undergrad I applied to one school and got in. For grad school, I applied to two schools. Wesleyan did not accept me "due to a high volume of exceptional applicants this year" and I ended up going to a school ranked lower but with more famous people in the department than Wesleyan.

>>9053384
>>9053394
To be fair to us. This is probably the single hardest time to get published in human history.

Imagine if Joyce were alive today and sent out something that started with
>Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this mooeow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

No one would even read it. Not that you're Joyce, but the point is that you've got to do it for you, man.

>>9053403
This
The fact that the average person doesn't read means good literature just doesn't sell

>>9053403
Publishing has never been easy to get into.

Funny you mention Joyce because he had a shit load of trouble actually getting published.

>>9053403
It took eight years for Dubliners to be accepted for publication

>>9053420
>>9053419
So do you guys think it would have been harder back then because things were probably more conservative?

>>9053430

I dunno, what's the point in wondering? It's always been hard.

>>9053433
True. I'm going to get back to reading Gravity's Rainbow and working through my sexual frustration before I get up early tomorrow to work on my novel about unrequited love and look for a job that pays more than minimum wage...

It is indeed true that publishing is a bullshit enterprise governed by social, political, and aesthetic cliques. Just read and write a shit tonne and you'll know if what you write is good, and you'll know whether you really deserved those rejections.

For proof, look at any contemporary lit rag and the sea of literally whos they put out. Most of these people are those who clawed their way through an MFA or work at the editor's art gallery or something, and their work is of no consequence and will subsequently be forgotten when they splatter out their next edition of shit.

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>Dear Anon,

>Thank you for submitting work to Tor.com Original Short Fiction, and for your long patience while we evaluated your story. Unfortunately, the story isn't quite right for us. It's a well-imagined world with a lot of vivid detail and a sympathetic main character, but the exposition didn't integrate with the other parts of the story in a way that felt natural to me--I remembered I was reading instead of falling into the narrative. That's an entirely subjective experience, of course, so another editorial staff might feel differently. I'll hand this back to you and wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere.

Well, at least they gave me feedback.

>>9053398
what the fuck did you write haha

>>9053457
That's a pretty nice rejection letter.

At least it isn't a form letter.

>>9053457
getting actual feedback is definitely a positive thing

>>9053478
Yeah, on the one hand I'm actually pretty grateful, because Tor.com got a fuckton of submissions before they closed to unsolicited work. My story was caught up in that massive pile, and they thought well enough of it to comment on it like that.

On the other hand, a rejection's a rejection.

>>9053457

>Took the time to send a personal response

That makes you like...ahead of everyone else not currently being published.

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>tfw rejection letter is a postcard

>>9053384
My first short story was rejected by several places before it finally got published on an e-zine, but one of the rejection letters actually gave me some feedback: they said that my characters were bland and that the story meandered too much. I learned from that to outline and focus my writing and to give a lot of thought to characterization. It helped.

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I got rejected from art school and got a business degree. Do I belong?

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I've had a few instances of feedback. In the end I'm still getting rejected but the responses lead me to believe I'm on the right track.

>>9053384
I once met a girl that I loved. she didn't like me at all though

>>9053817
i don't know if a nicer letdown is possible

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>>9053849

Yeah she was really great. I'm almost ready to submit my next novel and I think I'll submit to her first based on her response.

Here's another. This was actually my first rejection for this particular book.

>>9053872
for your sake you should keep in the back of your head though that maybe they really are just being nice, and the compliments are just to keep you from killing yourself as you must've put a lot of time into 170,000 words

i don't doubt it's pretty good, but it's best to expect the worst

>>9053886

Oh yeah I'm not kidding myself - six or so agents out of fifty have bothered to give me feedback so far. While it's not their prerogative to give feedback I'd still call that a low number of responders. Most others were template rejections.

(also she should count herself lucky - the first draft was 210k - but after her response I gave it a really fucking brutal edit and got it down to 130k)

>>9053457

Praise from Tor is high praise indeed. Keep plugging away.

I don't know about you guys but there was this one time where I masturbated, and after finishing, I sat on the toilet to pee, and that's when I noticed a spot of cum on the rim of the seat right between my legs that must've gotten there when I sat down so I took a piece of toilet paper, just two folded pieces of toilet paper to wipe it off the rim off the seat and since I do this ritualistically after every toilet session, I also wipe my butt but in this case, I did so with the semen-stained toilet paper, which I did not realize until I felt the damp cold of ejaculated cum on my anus. I felt really bad about it and the rejection aspect of this anecdote is that even I don't allow myself to cum in my ass, as does everyone else.

I once wrote an entire novel but my writing was shit and I did not try to publish it.

I wrote a great second one for an audience that does not exist and I couldn't publish.

I wrote a third one that wasn't nearly as good as the second because I "wasn't going to waste another year". Got rejected.

At a certain point, you just stop feeling.

>>9054660

The only thing I really feel in the rejection process is a slight sense of satisfaction when they're compelled to give feedback. It means you're doing something right, at least. Otherwise I just think of it from their end: unfortunately, it's strictly business. They need a book that sells, not one that's meaningful or well written.

>>9053872
You're unpublished and trying to push a 170,000 word novel?

There's your mistake there.

A GOOD 170k word novel from an unknown has no chance at all. It needs to be a PERFECT or fucking blow your balls away 170k novel in order to have any chance.

You should probably consider breaking it up into different novels or something.

>>9055127

Yeah I reduced it to 135k after her feedback. I was too lenient with my more purple passages. I'll be submitting a 95k novel this year thanks to her advice. It was my first attempt and I obviously overshot the mark.

>>9055227
I did sort of the same with my first novel. My first draft was like 130k, I edited it down to about 80k, without even changing any of the content really, just getting rid of the overly descriptive shit.