I have arrived! I just received my first rejection letter!

[Baitball Blogger]

My 15 seconds of fame have come and gone!

(I figure that's how long it took to put the stamp on the form letter.)

[trof]

1. Hemingway got 'em too.

And F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Thurber and Kurt Vonnegut.
The list of famous authors who got first (or later) efforts rejection letters is endless.
Never give up.
Keep writing.

[Baitball Blogger]

3. I'm expecting at least a hundred before I get a bite.

[Chan790]

2. I had so many as a writer before I was accepted for publication after college...

that I joked that I was going to self-publish my own second book (I wrote a children's book as a child which went to a small press. I got a certificate for being the youngest writer they'd ever published) consisting of nothing but all my rejection letters date-ordered and bound.

[Baitball Blogger]

4. Now that's cool.

Clever idea.

I'll probably go the e-book route after I give it another rewrite.

[hobbit709]

5. Never forget Dorothy Parker's book review

"This is not a book that should be casually tossed aside. It should be flung with great force"

[Baitball Blogger]

8. LOL!

[RebelOne]

6. I been in the publishing world for long, long time.

I worked at a magazine in Miami at one time as an editorial assistant. One of my duties was to send out rejection letters. There was one that I took to the editor and told him that the article was too good to turn down, but unfortunately, the editor did not agree. Several months later, that very same article was published in The Saturday Evening Post. So do not give up hope.

[Baitball Blogger]

7. I prepared myself for it

I'm just surprised how long it took to get in.

[HeiressofBickworth]

9. I started writing my first (and only) novel 28 years ago

I started it before computers were available. I wrote it on a correcting-selectric IBM typewriter. My goal, my ambition was to finish it, send it to a publisher and get a real, personalized rejection letter. I'm realistic, if nothing else. Well, I got so bogged down in the writing/re-writing process on that old typewriter that I just gave up. So, somewhere in a file folder in a box in the garage, among many other boxes of "stuff" is the beginning of that book. My personalized rejection letter lives as only another vague unachieved goal from my distant past.

[NJCher]

10. when I was in college

I lived with two other writer-type roommates in an apartment. We sent out so many stories that we had stacks of rejection letters. One day, someone decided we needed new wallpaper in the bathroom. We used those rejection letters for wallpaper!

Now that I'm an English teacher myself, I understand why our teachers were so amused with this.


Cher

[Baitball Blogger]

14. I really wish I had been able to "get it" sooner in English class.

Much of my self-editing relies on ear, instead of knowing the rules so well that I know how to break them.

[Baitball Blogger]

13. I couldn't have made it through my first manuscript without the benefits of technology.

Especially google.

[HopeHoops]

11. Save it as a badge of honor. Then keep trying.

[Baitball Blogger]

12. Yup.

I pinned it to the bulletin board. It's a badge of courage more than honor.