Latest Posts by sorayali20 - Page 2

When you are writing a story and refer to a character by a physical trait, occupation, age, or any other attribute, rather than that character’s name, you are bringing the reader’s attention to that particular attribute. That can be used quite effectively to help your reader to focus on key details with just a few words. However, if the fact that the character is “the blond,” “the magician,” “the older woman,” etc. is not relevant to that moment in the story, this will only distract the reader from the purpose of the scene. 

If your only reason for referring to a character this way is to avoid using his or her name or a pronoun too much, don’t do it. You’re fixing a problem that actually isn’t one. Just go ahead and use the name or pronoun again. It’ll be good.

“Getting” yourself to write

Yesterday, I was trawling iTunes for a decent podcast about writing. After a while, I gave up, because 90% of them talked incessantly about “self-discipline,” “making writing a habit,” “getting your butt in the chair,” “getting yourself to write.” To me, that’s six flavors of fucked up.

Okay, yes—I see why we might want to “make writing a habit.” If we want to finish anything, we’ll have to write at least semi-regularly. In practical terms, I get it.

But maybe before we force our butts into chairs, we should ask why it’s so hard to “get” ourselves to write. We aren’t deranged; our brains say “I don’t want to do this” for a reason. We should take that reason seriously.

Most of us resist writing because it hurts and it’s hard. Well, you say, writing isn’t supposed to be easy—but there’s hard, and then there’s hard. For many of us, sitting down to write feels like being asked to solve a problem that is both urgent and unsolvable—“I have to, but it’s impossible, but I have to, but it’s impossible.” It feels fucking awful, so naturally we avoid it.

We can’t “make writing a habit,” then, until we make it less painful. Something we don’t just “get” ourselves to do.

The “make writing a habit” people are trying to do that, in their way. If you do something regularly, the theory goes, you stop dreading it with such special intensity because it just becomes a thing you do. But my god, if you’re still in that “dreading it” phase and someone tells you to “make writing a habit,” that sounds horrible.

So many of us already dismiss our own pain constantly. If we turn writing into another occasion for mute suffering, for numb and joyless endurance, we 1) will not write more, and 2) should not write more, because we should not intentionally hurt ourselves.

Seriously. If you want to write more, don’t ask, “how can I make myself write?” Ask, “why is writing so painful for me and how can I ease that pain?” Show some compassion for yourself. Forgive yourself for not being the person you wish you were and treat the person you are with some basic decency. Give yourself a fucking break for avoiding a thing that makes you feel awful.

Daniel José Older, in my favorite article on writing ever, has this to say to the people who admonish writers to write every day:

Here’s what stops more people from writing than anything else: shame. That creeping, nagging sense of ‘should be,’ ‘should have been,’ and ‘if only I had…’ Shame lives in the body, it clenches our muscles when we sit at the keyboard, takes up valuable mental space with useless, repetitive conversations. Shame, and the resulting paralysis, are what happen when the whole world drills into you that you should be writing every day and you’re not.

The antidote, he says, is to treat yourself kindly:

For me, writing always begins with self-forgiveness. I don’t sit down and rush headlong into the blank page. I make coffee. I put on a song I like. I drink the coffee, listen to the song. I don’t write. Beginning with forgiveness revolutionizes the writing process, returns its being to a journey of creativity rather than an exercise in self-flagellation. I forgive myself for not sitting down to write sooner, for taking yesterday off, for living my life. That shame? I release it. My body unclenches; a new lightness takes over once that burden has floated off. There is room, now, for story, idea, life.

Writing has the potential to bring us so much joy. Why else would we want to do it? But first we’ve got to unlearn the pain and dread and anxiety and shame attached to writing—not just so we can write more, but for our own sakes! Forget “making writing a habit”—how about “being less miserable”? That’s a worthy goal too!

Luckily, there are ways to do this. But before I get into them, please absorb this lesson: if you want to write, start by valuing your own well-being. Start by forgiving yourself. And listen to yourself when something hurts.

Next post: freewriting

Ask me a question or send me feedback! Podcast recommendations welcome…

The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all. 

Mulan (1997), dir. Tony Bancroft, Barry Cook.

No matter how many times you fail to meet your own expectations, you have to forgive yourself. Despite contrary belief, dwelling on and badgering yourself over your faults doesn’t ever help you grow into who you want to be.

It’s like gardening: if your flower isn’t blossoming like you want it to, you don’t rip out its leaves as punishment for failing to satisfy you. You recognize the problem and figure out what’s going wrong with its environment so you can modify it, giving the flower a chance to bloom in its own time.

Accept your shortcoming or setback, forgive yourself, and figure out what’s going wrong so that you can plan for how to prevent it from repeating in the future. Thank your past self for trying in the first place and then give your future self the love needed to flourish.

After I get the spark for an idea, I get bored by it. How could I work it out so I can get into it and write something? I never finished anything because it's not interesting anymore.

 Almost every author I know has had this issue.  The minute you sit down to work on a project, ten other, apparently more attractive ideas will bob to the surface.

This isn’t a quintessentially fun solution, but the answer is to build a habit of commitment.  Jot down the shiny new ideas that pop up (or devote a separate time allotment to working on them, if you work best that way), plow ahead, and finish.  If you’re overwhelmed by the length of your current projects, try shorter ones.  You don’t have to like the final result, but you’ll be a stronger writer once you get in the habit of finishing projects.

The thing about us authors is, our stories are always more cinematic in our heads.  As we’re planning them out, we’re immersed in an opulent world that we want to share, and can only do our best to convey one word at a time.  So be patient with yourself, set reasonable goals, and build that habit!

I hope this helps, and happy writing.  <3

Female Characters to Avoid in your Writing:  An Illustrated Guide.

1.  The Bella Swan (i.e. the blank sheet of paper)

Who she is:

In Twilight, Bella has absolutely no qualities that make her interesting as a character.  She’s shown to have very little personality, in the books or onscreen, and is only made “interesting” (a relative term here) via the inclusion of her sparkly, abusive boyfriend.  It feeds into the harmful mentality of adolescent girls that you need a significant other in order to find fulfillment, particularly if he’s significantly older and likes to watch you sleep.  Yikes.

Examples:

Bella is welcomed to school by a friendly, extroverted girl and given a place to sit amongst her and her friends.  Despite this girl’s kindness, Bella shrugs her off as a stereotypical shallow cheerleader, and spends her time staring wistfully at the guy across the cafeteria from them.  Once Edward becomes her official boyfriend, she immediately loses interest in her new friends as her life shifts its orbit to revolve completely around him. 

How to avoid her:

Female characters are allowed to have lives outside of their significant others.  They’re allowed to have friends, quirks, hobbies, and interests.  Give them some. 

The best fictional relationships are based off of characters who compliment each other, not one character who revolves around the other.  Make sure your female character’s life does not centralize around her significant other.

Strong female characters don’t look down on other girls, even if they are outgoing cheerleaders.  Being pasty and introverted doesn’t make you a better person, y’all – if it did, I’d be a decorated hero by now.

Give them aspirations besides getting an obsessive, much-older boyfriend.  In fact, don’t give them an obsessive, much-older boyfriend at all – if you do want them to have a significant other, give them one who cares about their interests and accepts that they have lives and goals outside of them.

2.  The Molly Hooper (i.e. the starry-eyed punching bag)

Who she is:

 Like most things about BBC’s Sherlock, Molly was an amazing concept that went progressively downhill.  I used to love her quiet tenacity and emotional intelligence, and was sure that with her strong basis as a character, she would overcome her infatuation with the titular Sherlock and find self-fulfillment.  Nope!

Examples: 

She remained stubbornly infatuated over the course of five years with an ambiguously gay man who, en large, treated her badly, leading to her public humiliation with zero pertinence to the plot or resolution.  Moreover, her infatuation with Sherlock quickly usurped almost all of her other characteristics, leading her to an increasingly immature characterization that was difficult to relate to.

How to avoid her:

By all means, please write female characters who are quiet, kind, and unassuming (a female character does not, contrary to popular belief, need to be rambunctious, callous, or violent to be “strong”) but remember than none of these traits need to make the character a pushover.  Let them stand their ground.

Similarly, attraction to men (or anyone, for that matter) does not invalidate a female character’s strength.  Just be sure she values herself more than their attention.

As I said earlier, don’t be afraid to make characters who are gentle and soft-spoken, but be wary of making them “childlike,” or giving them an infantile, emotionally characterization.

My best advice for writing gentle, soft-spoken, unassuming women would actually to look to male characters in the media fitting this description; since male characters are rarely infantilized as much as women are by popular media, you’ll get a much better idea of what a well-rounded character looks like. 

3.  The Irene Adler (i.e. the defanged badass)  

Who she is: 

Yup, another one of the BBC Sherlock women, among whom only Mrs. Hudson seemed to come through with her dignity and characterization intact.  In the books, Irene and Sherlock have absolutely zero romantic connotations, only bonded via Sherlock’s irritation and respect with her substantial intelligence.  In the show, it’s a different story entirely. 

Examples:  

Irene is a badass character who’s turned into a teary-eyed Damsel in Distress via her uncontrollable love for the show’s male lead.  It doesn’t help matters that she’s a self-proclaimed lesbian who falls in love with a man, which, unless you’re a woman who loves women yourself and writing about a character realizing she’s bi/pansexual, I would recommend against doing under any circumstances.  She ends up being defeated and subsequently rescued by Sherlock – a far cry from her defeat of him in the books. 

How to avoid her:

If you’re writing a badass female character, allow her to actually be badass, and allow her to actually show it throughout your work as opposed to just hearing other characters say it.  And one punch or kick isn’t enough, either:  I want to see this chick jump out of planes.

That said, “badass” does not equal emotionally callous.  It doesn’t bother me that Moffat showed Irene having feelings for someone else, what bothers me is how he went about it. 

When writing a character who’s shown to be attracted to more than one gender, just say she’s bisexual.  Pansexual.  Whatever, just don’t call her straight/gay depending on the situation she’s in.  Jesus.

4.  The Becky (i.e. the comedic rapist) 

Who she is: 

Most people who know me can vouch for my adoration of Supernatural, but it definitely has its problems:  it’s not as diverse as it could be, its treatment of women is subpar, and yes, there is some thinly veiled sexual violence:  all three of its leading characters have dealt with it at one point of another (Dean is routinely groped by female demons, a virginal Castiel was sexually taken advantage of by a disguised reaper, and the whole concept of sex under demonic possession is iffy to say the least.)  It’s rarely ever addressed afterwards, and is commonly used for comedic fodder.  Possibly the most quintessential example of this is Becky.

Examples: 

Becky abducts Sam, ties him to the bed, and kisses him against his will.  She then drugs him, albeit with a love potion, and is implied to have had sex with him under its influence. 

How to avoid her:

Male rape isn’t funny, y’all.  Media still takes rape against women a lot more seriously than rape against men, particularly female-on-male rape, and I can assure you its not.

Educate yourself on statistics for male sexual assault:  approximately thirty-eight percent of sexual violence survivors are male, for example, and approximately one in sixteen male college students has reported to have experienced sexual assault. 

Moreover, be aware that forty-six percent of all instances of male rape have a female perpetrator.

Read more here in this amazing article: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2014/04/male_rape_in_america_a_new_study_reveals_that_men_are_sexually_assaulted.html

In other words, treat themes of sexual assault against men as seriously as you would treat themes of sexual assault against women.       

5.  The Movie Hermione (i.e. the flawless superhuman) 

Who she is: 

Okay, in and of herself, Movie Hermione is amazing:  she’s beautiful, intelligent, and heroic, as well as possibly the most useful character of the franchise.  She only bothers me in context of the fact that she takes away everything I loved most about Book Hermoine, and everything I loved about Book Ron, too.   

Examples: 

Book Hermione was beautiful, but not conventionally:  she had big, poofy curls, big teeth, and didn’t put a lot of effort into maintaining her appearance.  Movie Hermione looks effortlessly flawless, all the time.  Book Hermione was intelligent, but also loud, abrasive, and unintentionally annoying when talking about her interests (which meant a lot to me, because as a kid on the Asperger’s spectrum, I frequently was/am that way myself – it was nice to see a character struggling with the same traits).  She was also allowed to have flaws, such as struggling to keep up with academia, and being terrified of failure.  

Movie Hermione also took all of Ron’s redeeming qualities, and everything that made him compliment her as a couple:  his street smarts used to compliment her academic intelligence, for example, staying calm while she panicked in the Philosopher’s Stone when they were being overcome with vines.  He also stood up for her in the books against Snape, as opposed to the jerkish “he’s right, you know.”     

How to avoid her:

Allow your female characters to have flaws, as much so as any well-rounded male character.  Just be sure to counterbalance them with a suitable amount of redeeming qualities.  This will make your female character well-rounded, dynamic, and easy to get invested in.

There’s no reason for your female characters to always look perfect.  Sure, they can be stunningly gorgeous (particularly if their appearance is important to them), but it’s physical imperfections that make characters fun to imagine:  Harry’s scar and wild hair, for example.  Female characters are no different. 

If you’re writing a female character to have an eventual love interest, allow their personalities to compliment one another.  Allow the love interest to have qualities that the female character is lacking, so that they can compliment one another and have better chemistry. 

Basically, write your female characters as people. 

Check out my list of male characters to avoid here:   https://thecaffeinebookwarrior.tumblr.com/post/161184030785/male-protagonists-to-avoid-in-your-writing-an.

God willing, I will be publishing essays like this approximately every Friday, so be sure to follow my blog and stay tuned for future writing advice and observations!

THAT is how you deliver a tribute speech.

This website goes into more detail about using multiple POVs.

Great tips on things to think about when writing using multiple POVs

some things I need to remind myself daily tbh

If Marvel movies were written by women

-Peggy Carter’s funeral would have been more than 3 minutes long.

-Tony Stark would have given a eulogy to Peggy, having grown up admiring her, his dad’s colleague of many years, a tremendously strong female role model (the woman who approved Pepper’s hire, of course).

-Steve Rogers would not have put the moves on Peggy’s niece within a day of burying Peggy.

-Black Widow would have gotten her own movie by now.

-A big part of Bucky’s backstory/flashbacks would have been told through Natasha’s viewpoint, her memories of either working with or against The Winter Soldier in Russia and the East. 

-Pepper Potts would have been in Civil War, speaking for herself.

-Wanda’s grief over her brother would still be very present.  Her feelings of loss and mourning would be front-and-center for her character.

-Black Panther’s woman bodyguard would have had more than one line. 

-Natasha would have told Steve that she was at Peggy’s funeral in part because she didn’t want him to be alone, but also in part to pay respects to the great Peggy Carter.

-There would be way more women in these movies.  There would be women of many ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and nationalities in these movies.  There would be many scenes of women talking to women.  There would be many more scenes of women talking.  And doing.  And feeling.  And being. 

You are a dynamic character in the story of your life.  You are complex and multi-dimensional.  Don’t give up.  Your story isn’t over!

Click through to awesome photo array at: http://www.buzzfeed.com/doree/quotes-about-writing

How to recover an unsaved draft on Microsoft Word

This literally saved my ass a few minutes ago. Yes, you can recover those files that you accidentally closed and thought you couldnt get back. 

Right after that happens, open Microsoft Word again and click File - Info - Manage Versions - Recover Unsaved Documents.

It is literally that simple.

Traveler’s blessing

Kom chilnes yu na ban sishou-de au, Kom hodnes yu na hon neson op. Gouthru klir hashta yu soujon, Kom taim oso fali kom daun gon graun-de. Mebi oso na hit choda op nodotaim.

In peace, may you leave the shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, Until our final journey to the ground. May we meet again. 

How to be Your own Best Friend

1. Treat yourself the way you would treat a person who you loved, highly valued, and cared about.

2. Always love yourself – no matter what!

3. Only say positive, compassionate, understanding and affirming things about, and to, yourself.

4. Hold your own hand in tough and stressful times. Don’t abandon yourself, or let yourself down.

5. Respect yourself, and the efforts that you’re making to be a better person, and to change and to grow.

6. Understand your limitations, be patient with yourself. Accept that it takes time to master anything at all.

7. Be kind to yourself when you feel self-critical, or you want to be judgmental and hard on yourself.

Is micro fiction the same as one- shots?

It’s really just different story lengths.

Super Novel: 120,000+ words Novel: 80,00-120,000 words Young Adult Novel: 30,00-70,000 words Novella: 15,000-30,000 words Short Story: up to 15,000 words Flash Fiction: up to 1,000 words Micro Fiction: up to 300 words

And that’s just one list I found. There are several others with small variations, one change being they listed flash fiction as being up to 100 words but no more. There’s room to be flexible, and they’re really just guidelines. 

Everyday we change the world. But to change the world in a way that means anything, that takes more time than most people have. It never happens all at once. It’s slow. It’s methodical. It’s exhausting. We don’t all have the stomach for it.

#PitchWars Prep: Day 3 of 23

Written 13/07/16

It started off quite similarly as yesterday. Not a whole lot of work was getting done, but that’s because I was excited! I was turning in my passport application today and I am so freaking happy about getting my passport! I’m going to Europe in middle/late January so I’m super excited about it. The lady was super nice, but I wish passports weren’t so pricey. Oh well, they weren’t too bad in price. As a gift to my mum, I bought it for her since my Aunt’s paying for her ticket. An all paid for trip for her.

Anyways, we got back home around 2:30 so I caught up on some YouTube videos and around 3:30, I started working. I’m cutting and adding things as I go, so right now my word count is almost where the last draft ended which was 96,700. The reason is, there’s a lot of details that I’ve changed and I felt like there’s extra paragraphs that could be added. I am not worrying too much as I’m taking a whole chapter out because I’m changing the storyline mentioned in that particular chapter.

I write on the desktop program called Scrivener (amazing program for all writers) and there’s one annoying thing about it that I can’t stand. When you copy and paste from Word, it formats your chapters weird. So I’m forced to make new chapters for the ones that weren’t written on Scrivener. Also, it’s added an extra indent so it’s really annoying. 

At the end of the day, I didn’t finish a whole chapter, but I don’t really mind. It was a Sci-fi heavy chapter and I was fixing tons of descriptions and changing some of the technology I had. I am almost done with this chapter, but it’s over 4,000 words to begin with so I knew I wouldn’t finish. I told you I would slow down eventually.

YES 100%. I love Peggy. I love the people working on this project. A privilege and an honor to bring her back to the fans. I’d shoot on the weekends. Blue serum. Whatever it takes.

Hayley Atwell on Agent Carter being saved by Netflix. (via fuckyeahatwell)

how did you get into writing and getting published?

I’ve always loved writing.  I wrote poetry and stories all the time when I was a kid.  I have piles and piles of notebooks at my house full of decades’ worth of everything from fanfic smut (decades before I had the internet and knew that “fanfic smut” was a thing) to terrible poetry to novels in progress.  I didn’t know that being a writer was a real job people could have, I just liked to write and make up stories. 

I went to college to study theatre because I thought I wanted to be an actor (as it turns out, I VERY MUCH did not).  My school didn’t offer playwriting on the regular, but we had a visiting professor for a year who was a playwright and I took his class, and he was the first person who said to me, “You know, if you wanted to do this, this is something you could do.”  I wrote my first play for his class (reblogginhood was in it!) and kept writing after that. 

Then at some point in my twenties, I don’t really know why, I stopped writing.  I think I hit a point where I had kind of decided, “okay, this isn’t practical, this isn’t a real career, I need to figure out how the fuck I’m going to pay my electric bill, I need to give up this dream and go, like, be a regular human.”  So I did that for awhile.  I got into the world of arts management and worked for a bunch of different theatre companies doing marketing and fundraising and things like that.  And it was fine, I was good at it, I met a lot of people in the theatre world and all my friends were cool artists and it was great, but then it made me really sad because there was a part of me that felt like they were living this great exciting life I wasn’t living because I had stopped trying to even have that. 

Then a friend of mine asked me to help her write grants for this new project she was starting, which was a citywide new play festival that anyone could be in.  You didn’t have to be fancy or famous, you didn’t have to even be any good.  You just had to write a play, and show up.  So I signed up and I paid my fee and for seven years in a row, every year I wrote a new play for the festival.  I just kept writing and writing and writing and writing.  It was a huge amount of hard work.  I lost money on every show because I was paying actors out of my own pocket and printing playbills at Kinkos.  I borrowed coffee shops and warehouses from friends, anywhere I could perform for free.  I directed the shows myself if I couldn’t afford a director.  I ran sound off my iPod.  I tore my own tickets at the door.  I was working two jobs, around 60-hour weeks, and then writing until like 2 in the morning because that was the time that I had.  And then slowly, I got better.  My crappy amateur plays, where I was trying to copy the voices of other, better writers improved because I started to figure out what I really cared about and what I really wanted to say.  I applied for tons and tons and tons of awards and grants and fellowships and residencies.  I won a couple of them (maybe one out of every 50 things I applied for) and that helped get other people to take me seriously, but the most important thing was that I just kept writing and writing.  I had a new play in the festival every year, so slowly people started to know who I was and recognize my name.  Not zillions of people, but handfuls at a time.  The first show had like 30 people in the audience each night; I worked my way up to being able to fill a 200-seat venue.  Then I got asked to join a company of local playwrights who produce one show a year by one of their member writers; they had watched me busting my ass over the past seven or eight years and knew that I was a hard worker and had been watching my work get better and then finally one day they asked me to join and offered me a full production of one of my plays.  (That’s happening next month.) 

In between writing plays, I wanted to challenge myself, so I tried a few times to do National Novel Writing Month.  I never finished, but I had a few chapters of a time travel science fiction story about Watergate that I was noodling around with that I really liked, and from time to time I would pick it up and play with it some more in between theatre projects.  Then one day my brother, who is an L.A. film editor, called me to tell me that a company he worked with was branching out from film into publishing and was looking for science fiction novels.  I didn’t have a novel, I had like four chapters and some shrapnel, and was reluctant to show it to anyone, but my brother sent it off to his friend anyway, and they called me three days later to tell me they wanted to publish it and would pay me an advance to finish it.  (It’s coming out this summer.)

There are an infinite number of different directions a writing career can go, and no one writer’s path to success is necessarily replicable by any other writer.  I’m fully aware that my story of how I got a novel published is a weird one with a strange combination of luck and coincidence and circumstance and privilege and a million other forces I can’t control which resulted in my unfinished novel landing on the desk of someone looking for just such an unfinished novel.  But the important part is everything that happened before that, all the years of staying up until three in the morning or skipping happy hours with friends because I had to write, all the years of staged readings of mediocre plays where I was paying actors in pizza and hugs because I had no money, and even all the years of working demanding and tedious marketing and fundraising jobs for theatre companies, because that was how I became a writer.  There’s how to become a writer, and then there’s getting a book published.  Honestly I still cannot tell anyone how to get a book published.  “Have a brother who knows someone starting a publishing company” isn’t a career plan.  But I can tell you how to be a writer.  You just have to write. 

My heart is a huge library, and every book in it is about you.

Mansi (via fandammit)

don’t let anyone tell you that it’s a bad thing to feel things deeply. a full heart is a strong heart and being soft doesn’t make you weak. being soft and loving makes you radiant. you deserve all of the love in the world and so many good things.

writing is either

or

there is nothing in between.

How to Get Motivated After a Long Break

I haven’t written in a while. I had some life stuff going on and I forgot how difficult it is to get back into writing after a long break. There’s a manuscript waiting for me to edit it and another story idea waiting for me to flesh it out. What’s the best way to approach this?

First, make a list

Start by getting everything in order. Grab your favorite notebook (or designate a new on to 2016) and starting listing what you want to work on this year. Is there anything you need to finish up? What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish by 2017? These plans don’t have to be anything grand, they can be small steps toward your goals. Be realistic and know your limits.

Focus on tying up loose ends

The first thing I’m going to do is finish up the novel I’m in the middle of editing. Do you best to finish projects first before moving on to something else. Engross yourself in that story again and try to continue where you left off. Try to reread what you already edited to familiarize yourself with where you were going. It feels great to finish things. It will get you motivated for your next project.

Get yourself excited again

It’s hard to work on something that doesn’t motivate you. If it’s been a while, try to figure out what excited you about that project in the first place. Reread old notes. Look over your story and focus on characters. Why do you like them? What motivated you to write this story? Try to tap back into your excitement and get back into the same mind frame you were in when you were writing.

Toss stale projects

Sometimes a story just doesn’t work. You lost your passion for it and you’re unable to get a back. The story feels old and it doesn’t speak to you anymore. That’s fine. Not everything is going to stick and you need to know what you should move on from. If you’ve stopped writing because you’re just not excited about your story, maybe it’s time to move on. However, if you’ve stopped writing because life got in the way, there’s a chance you can still motivate yourself to work on that story. The decision is up to you.

-Kris Noel

Famous authors, their writings and their rejection letters.

Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.

Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.

Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.

Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.

Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.

The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.

Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)

H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.

Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.

Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…

Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.

William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!

Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.

Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.

George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.

Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.

Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.

The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.

Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.

John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.

Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.

Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.

Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.

Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.

Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.

Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.

The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.

Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.

Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters