My husband sometimes returns from the mailbox with the comment, “Here’s another one of those letters from you to you.” Writers among you will recognize his description of a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE, for short) sent with a submission so the publisher can send me an acceptance or rejection. A thick envelope may mean a contract or a request for revision before publication. A thin envelope usually thanks me for thinking of them and wishes me luck in placing the writing somewhere else. Any way they sugarcoat it, this one is a rejection letter. Too many of them brings the question of when to quit sending work out and asking for more discouragement.
I’d read that Gone with the Wind got thirty-six rejections before it was accepted for publication and set that as my measure of when to get discouraged, but not necessarily when to throw in the towel.
I have a new standard after reading Kathryn Stockett’s account of sending out The Help sixty times and getting sixty rejection letters. What if she had not sent it out that sixty-first time? Small wonder that her husband says that both her best trait and her worst trait is that she never gives up!
Kathryn’s other reaction to rejection brings a different question. When the rejected manuscript came back, she rewrote and fine tuned – over and over again. Which brings the next question, what if she had not focused on rewriting? But that is a blog for another time…