Lara Zielin

STATUS: In the throes of reading The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. This book is unputdownable. I am devouring it, yet dreading when I actually have to finish it. I haven’t read a book this good in a long while. I suppose I’ll go see the movie now, though I know it won’t live up to this amazing work.

FAVE LINKEY-POO RIGHT THIS SECOND: The U.S. men’s relay team swimming against the French at the Olympics. What a race!  

I found another lost treasure as I continued to unpack this week: The worst rejection letter ever. I have to qualify this by saying I’ve received SO MANY rejection letters in my life that I certainly know a bad one when I see it. And this one was horrific.

First, the size. This publisher probably had an intern who was told to be more environmentally conscious and, as a result, photocopied several rejection letters onto one sheet. Then they cut them so the actual rejection letter was nothing more than a skinny strip.

Then of course was the text. The same intern probably wanted to make the letter as concise as possible, so the words were few, and the text was tiny. The letter was minimalist to a degree that Barnett Newman would be proud of.

Dear Author: Your work is not right for us. Good luck placing it elsewhere.

Did I mention the font was tiny?

No name, no signature, no address — nothing. Just a strip they shoved into my SASE and sent back to me.

Classy.

The moral of the story? Rejection letters suck. The bad ones suck even harder. But they’re inevitable. If you put your stuff out there, someone’s going to hate it. And, with any luck, someone’s going to love it as well.

This afternoon, I’m going to TJ Maxx. And I’m buying a frame for the worst rejection letter ever. And I’ll use it to remind myself that the next “no” I hear just brings me that much closer to a “yes.”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 1:46 pm and is filed under writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.