EVERY writer should read this!

For those of you who have had your work accepted by an agent - or even a publisher - you can look at these lists with amused interest.

For those of us who haven't, who have received SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many rejection slips (or e-mails) or to whom agents / publishers haven't even bothered replying, who are considering tossing in the towel and being "sensible" and "realistic" about accepting the fact that this writing thingie just isn't for us, I think that these 2 lists should restore some hope:

A list of 14 books, each of which was rejected AT LEAST 15 times. Some of them many, many more times than that. (One of my favourite 99 books of all time was rejected 121 times! [Every time that I re-read it, I consider declaring that it's in my top 36.] The editor who finally published Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance said of Pirsig's book, "It forced me to decide what I was in publishing for."):

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/14-best-selling-books-repeatedly-rejected-by-publishers.htm

And - on another web-site, "an extenstive collection of the some of the biggest errors of judgement in publishing history":

http://www.literaryrejections.com/best-sellers-initially-rejected/

This 2nd list includes the following:

“Hopelessly bogged down and unreadable.” The 1968 letter from an editor did not deter the author, Ursula K. Le Guin, as her book The Left Hand of Darkness goes on to become just the first of her many best-sellers, and is now regularly voted as the second best fantasy novel of all time, next to The Lord of the Rings.

Bit sloppy with their research there: The Left Hand of Darkness is regularly voted the 2nd best SCIENCE FICTION novel of all time, after Dune by Frank Herbert (which appears in the 1st list: rejected by 23 publishers). TLHOD also happens to be MY 2nd favourite sci-fi novel, but 1st is Woman On The Edge Of Time by Marge Piercy. Even if you HATE sci-fi (and would probably hate Dune), read these 2 books!

[Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy is regularly voted the 2nd best work of fantasy of all time, next to - yes - Lord Of The Rings. And Ursula K. Le Guin is voted the # AUTHOR in both catagories. Earthsea wipes the floor with Harry Potter AND Lord Of The Rings.]

NEVER lose your dream!