Rejection
The Patience of a Writer
Give It Time By Don Wallace When I was 21 my Dad took me aside and said, “Truman Capote had a bestseller at 21. Don’t you want to be a lawyer?” When I was 25 my Dad took me aside and said, “Science says our brain cells begin to decay at 18 and it’s irreversible. [...]
Writer Interrupted Part 1
The Cruelest Rejection of All By Dick Cummins Dick is a 1970 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop living in San Diego. This is an excerpt from a work in progress. I quit writing cold turkey in 1979; laid down my Ticonderoga Yellow Barrel #2’s and pawned the old Underwood. It was the day my [...]
Kirkus, Baby!
We’re a featured Kirkus Reviews nonfiction post. To all the struggling writers out there who relentlessly confront the blank page, not knowing when—never say IF—their efforts will be rewarded, we’re here to say stay the course. Dreams do come true; sometimes it just takes awhile. There are a few more pubs on the bucket list. We’ll [...]
What Do Publishers Want?
Jumping Through Hoops By Ross Howell Recently my mother-in-law’s neighbor phoned me after he learned that I had studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He had completed a first novel, had gotten a response from an agent, and wanted to know what to do next. “There seem to be so many hoops to jump through,” [...]
Paul Harding Video Part 1
In this interview conducted at his alma mater, the Pulitzer, PEN/Robert Bingham, and Guggenheim fellowship winner discusses the debut novel that put him on the map. Tinkers was famously rejected by major houses before being published by tiny Bellevue Literary Press.
What’s the Best Way to Handle Rejection?
MARVIN BELL — Handle it?! Don’t handle it! Subsume it. Write a lot, send out a lot, realize that editorial decisions are not personal, understand that editors are in the business of rejecting submissions and only rarely accepting something, and understand, too, that acceptance doesn’t mean what you think it means. If you [...]
Intro: A Word From the Editors
As I write this, the release of We Wanted to be Writers is six months off, scheduled for August, 2011. We’re also just a few days away from a reading from the book at the annual meeting of the AWP in Washington, DC. That meeting takes place on February 3, at 10:30 am in the [...]
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