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Did you know that Madeleine L'Engle almost gave up writing when she turned 40 after getting yet another rejection notice? "With all the hours I spent writing, I was still not pulling my own weight financially." She discovered, however, that her subconscious wouldn't let her NOT write.
"I had to write. I had no choice in the matter. It was not up to me to say I would stop because I could not. It didn't matter how small or inadequate my talent. If I never had another book published, and it was very clear to me that this was a real possibility, I still had to go on writing." (Source)
A Wrinkle In Time was rejected 26 times before John C. Farrar of Farrar, Straus and Giroux published it. It ended up winning the 1963 Newbery Medal and became a beloved classic.
Sources:
The Storyteller: Fact, Fiction and the books of Madeleine L'Engle - by Cynthia Zarin on NewYorker.com
Awards & Honors: 2004 National Humanities Medalist, Madeleine L'Engle
Penguin Random House Audio Publishing page about Madeleine L'Engle
Wikipedia pages on A Wrinkle In Time and Madeleine L'Engle (though I notice a lot of conflicting info!)
According to a Time interview with Kathryn Stockett, The Help was rejected 60 times by agents before being picked up by Susan Ramer at Don Congdon.
The book was Kathryn's debut as a novelist and took her five years to complete. Since it came out in 2009, The Help has been published in 35 countries and three languages.
A bunch of my "successful writers who got rejected" posts got trashed during the Big Move After Being Hacked some years ago, but I'm starting up the series again. I'll be reposting some old rejection stories as well as new ones.
Rex Pickett's SIDEWAYS was rejected 70-80 times before finally being accepted. The book was later adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.
You can hear an interview with Rex on OterhPeoplePod.com.
(via GalleyCat)
