The Success of My Search Went South

I've gotten a few of these over the years.  Plus I've gotten some personalized CBLTD rejections, and a couple of agents who wanted me to do rewrites for them. Those were the old days, baby.  Now, I just sit, wait, and act like I don't even care.

It's So Bad It's Good, F. Larry

What the hell have I stumbled on here? Someone posting my version of heaven! F. Larry Badgood, indeed! I want to read the 100 pages of bad sex writing and be confused about the "orgy scene."  Is that spaghetti sauce?  Did someone actually go to the trouble of fabricating these rejections, as if he'd found them in the garbage, and then put them up just for our fun and enjoyment? How entirely amusing! Feel free to speculate about the crazed mind of Bo Swiderski, who may not even be a real person. (I'm not even going to wait until tomorrow to post these; enjoy them now.)  Comment away...

Becoming "Writer, Rejected": The Family Barfer

I was the kid my father hated.
    Maybe it was because I was last. Or different.
    My older brothers walked around killing things with guns. Our house was filled with rifles, animal heads mounted on walls, lamp stands made out of deer feet, photos of Reagan and Bush as cowboys, a gigantic carousel horse in the middle of the living room, and a barber's chair. If it weren't for all that, my mother's decor might have seemed normal, though a throwback to the year I was born: orange shag rugs, dark wood paneling, white sofas, glass coffee tables, a copper fountain in the front hallway with a fat cherub peeing into a pond.
     My father was gregarious and over-bearing, the 2nd-generation son of factory workers who'd barely escaped the Old Country. He managed to get an education (nearly flunking), a highly respected profession, and a big colonial house in the suburbs. At heart he was a bigot, though, and outwardly racist, not to mention sexist, which made my mother's love for me seem at times irrelevant. He gulped gin martinis in a big glass tumbler and drunk-drove us around in a Chevy Blazer.
     It didn't help that I was the family barfer. My churning stomach couldn't be controlled. Once I threw up broccoli and cheese in the passenger side footwell; he hadn't even started the car yet. The mean brothers called me Barfy.
     Sensing something wrong, I spent my childhood fabricating fantasy illnesses: malignant tumors, encephalitis, broken bones. The more extreme, the better. I remember coma scenarios that lasted for years. There were things to consider: how it happened (heroically), how long it should last (indeterminately), how I could wake up (triumphantly), how much rehabilitation and attention and love I would need (more than existed).
     This habit wasn’t just a passing fancy; it was my career.
     One time, after getting eye drops at the doctor’s, I had my mother lead me around the mall, as if I were a poor blind kid. Another time, after a daring spill off the swings at school, I exaggerated the situation to see how far things would go. I remember sitting on an examination table in the hospital, being shown the feathery white inner ghosts of my arm floating in a black sea on x-ray film. It was breathtaking, mesmerizing, an unexpected view of a plain old appendage. But there they were, too, my bones, whole and healthy, proof that nothing was actually wrong.
      Nothing I could put into words....

I Swear I Thought it Said "Olivia B. Bummer"!

Jenny Edwards, Rejection Queen, has posted what would be a pretty damn adorable version of her most recent rejection if you replace the name "Blumer" with the word "Bummer":


Olivia B. Blumer
The Blumer Literary Agency
350 Seventh Avenue
Suite 2003
New York, NY 10001-5013                       (Form rejection)
   
Dear Sir or Madam:
    I am grateful to have had the opportunity to consider your work, and regret having to respond in such an impersonal fashion. The volume of submissions is such that an individual response is no longer possible. I have read the material that you sent and while interesting, it isn't appropriate for my list. My taste is eclectic and I am always seeking some balance in my client list, so my reaction to your work may have as much to with my needs as it does with your talent. While I must delcine to represent you, I do wish you luck elsewhere. Thanks again for the opportunity.
    Sincerely yours,
    The Blumer Literary Agency

Queenie is having a hard time with the holidays, as is everyone with a messed-up family of origin (I include myself in that esteemed club), so go on over to her blog and give her some good cheer and encouragement, please.

I Have Found My Virtual Guru

Over at Salon.com's Since You Asked column, Cary Tennis dished out some beautiful advice to a writer whose second novel was rejected after her editor read it and ditched her. Writes the columnist/sage: "The rejection is felt by your true, innocent, unprotected self, the self that requires unconditional love. At this crucial time, you must listen to the wounded innocent and feel that pain and bewilderment. But you must also invoke the powerful, avenging hero. It is not just the innocent that helps us write. It is also the warrior. The innocent creates these lovely things and looks up wide-eyed and says, Look! Isn't it beautiful? The warrior sharpens her arrows deep into the night, checks her armor, practices the kill shot, surveys the opposition, steels herself against fear. The innocent needs the warrior. Beauty and strength: One without the other is not enough. The empty warrior is like the blinded one-eyed Cyclops, flailing madly in the cave. The unworldly artist is like an infant left in the forest to be eaten. As artists, we need both the innocent and the warrior." It seriously brought a tear to my eye to feel so understood. Take a click on over to read the whole column: heart-wrenching letter and beautiful response. You won't be sorry.

It's Tough For Everybody These days

Word.

Holiday Rejection Haiku Challenge

agents who never read, life at a standstill
reject not my novel


[Not very good...I bet you can do better.  Give it a shot?  Rule: 17 syllables.]