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Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Personal Best Rejection

A reader sent me this link to a blogger who posts a particularly arrogant rejection from a particularly harsh agent on her blog:

http://savvy.entrepreneur.com/2007/06/06/rejection/

Check it out.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

See, again, you say "arrogant" and "harsh", I say "honest". If the agent had minced words and euphamismed their way to a "no", you would have been calling for a return to honesty. You really set up a no win situation.

rmellis said...

These are the best kind of rejections, actually, because when the writer finally sells the book she can feel all Ha Ha Ha, I showed them!

Writer, Rejected said...

Anonymous:

There's nothing no-win about it.

"No way will I ever publish your book" is a perfectly acceptable response. It is a true statement. The end. The writer moves on.

"No way will I ever publish your book because it sucks, you suck as a writer, and your idea is dumb," is an arrogant, unnecessary abuse of publishing power, which will probably stop the writer in her tracks for a while. (Not to mention it can be just plain wrong.)

Don't you think there's a difference between the two?

Anonymous said...

I never said there was no difference between the two, so quit the patronizing shit. But you do set up a no win situation that always leaves you, the poor martyred writer, as suffering at the cruel hands of an unjust meanie who doesn't understand your genius. If the rejection is too nice, you complain that it gets your hopes up, says a lot without saying anything useful, resorts to cliches, whatever. If the rejection is honest and direct, you complain that it's mean. So what's the solution?

Writer, Rejected said...

A martini.

Anonymous said...

...with that gorgeous middle-aged guy.

Anonymous said...

This was from my blog on womenentrepreneur.com - Thank you all for posting this and adding your honest responses! Its always great to get feedback. I post these because I think its important for people to realize that EVERYONE gets rejected (in my case again and again) and hopefully one day I can look back on it and say I KEPT TRUCKING ALONG! I'm sure there will be more of these posts to come and come read my blog anytime ! I love the feedback!

Best,
Lauren (The Intern Queen)
www.internqueen.com