“I’m sorry Mr Kipling, but you don’t know how to use the English language.”
Those were the words of the Editor of the San Francisco Examiner, rejecting a short story from author and poet Rudyard Kipling. In case you have a writing goal on your resolutions list, it offers hope to keep famous rejections in mind.
George Orwell, Sylvia Plath, Stephen King, Irving Stone – all have received now laughable rejection letters. One more to comfort the soon-to-be famous writers among you. This one was written by a publisher rejecting Joseph Heller’s 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.”
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