Remember: A rejection isn't a death knell

I have a very close relative who is a wonderful writer. She's written a book - no, she's poured her heart and soul into writing a book. And it's good. I've read it.

Yesterday, it was rejected by a publisher. Again. We all know how that feels. Well, maybe not all of us, but a lot of us. It's frustrating, maddening. We feel helpless, useless, like Sisyphus charged with our own personal, impossible task.

We know the publishing industry is in chaos. We know there's a glut of writers out there. But reading that rejection letter, none of it matters. It still hurts like hell.

Yes, I know, we're writers, and writers need to have thick skins. We need to square our shoulders and toss our heads and know we're better than all that. We need to remember there's a lot of dreck out there, and publishers have to wade through it every day. We know it's a tough industry, and we chose it.

But some days, it's hard not to take it personally. Sooooo . .. .

There is a book by Andre Bernard titled Rotten Rejections: A Literary Companion . I found a few excerpts on a variety of places on the Web, including a nifty little Web site, www.writersservices.com, which offers a lot more than solace.

But still, a little bit never hurts. This book shows that publishers aren't always right. They've made a few mistakes, passed on some pretty big hits. And they haven't always been terribly polite about it.

So here are a few favorites for those of us - including my relative - who may still be licking our wounds. Remember, a rejection isn't a death knell. It isn't a fact. It's one person's opinion.

Someday, she'll be famous. And then they'll be sorry:

Jack Kerouac: "His frenetic and scrambled prose perfectly expresses the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don't think so."

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame: "An irresponsible holiday story."

Lord of the Flies by William Golding: "An absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull."

Watership Down by Richard Adams: "Older children wouldn't like it because its language is too difficult."

The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman: "If you insist on rewriting this, get rid of all that Indian stuff."

Animal Farm by George Orwell: "It's impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A."

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."

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

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: "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."

The perfect poem for Saturday

Remember when you were a kid, and you'd wake up Monday morning, so tired, just absolutely, positively sure that there was no way you could make it through school that day? In fact, you were pretty sure you were deathly ill? But then, on the weekend, you were suddenly, miraculously, recovered??!!

I used to think that was just me, but the late poet Shel Silverstein, one of my faves, has showed me that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't.

Sick
by Shel Silverstein


"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.

My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?

My leg is cut--my eyes are blue--
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.

My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.

My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?

What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is. . .Saturday?

G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

Have a wonderful weekend, everybody!! I actually see some sunshine out there!!

Right word, right time, big difference

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."
Mark Twain

I was perusing the latest celebrity headlines, making sure I got my fix of the lives of the rich and famous, when I came upon this headline:

"Bruce Willis Not Fussed About Starting a Family."

The gist of the story - which, okay, yes, I read - was that the newly married movie star wasn't terribly concerned over whether he had more kids or not. Fine. Cool. Way to be laid back, Bruce.

But as for that weird headline, I had to read it twice. Fussed? Seriously? I knew what the headline writer meant, but surely that wasn't the word he was looking for. But it offered another perfect example of how just one wrong word can ruin otherwise fine prose.

Words, as we all know, can be confusing. Not to oversimplify here, but there are an awful lot of words out there that sound incredibly alike. And writers have to think very carefully when they're painting their visuals, lest they lead their readers astray.

For instance:
Your main character. Is she trembling or tremulous?
That detective? Is he foundering or floundering?
And the wealthy aunt: complacent or complaisant?

All things to consider. That Mark Twain quote, above? Probably overused, yes, but it's so good, I just couldn't resist. Because he makes his point so succinctly and wonderfully. Lightning crackles and sparkles in the sky - it's memorable, unforgettable, sometimes even talked about for weeks. A lightning bug? Well, that's a different story; just a charming little thing you point at and move on.

I edited a piece of copy once where the reporter was writing about a group of community leaders checking out a landfill for the first time. The day was dark, cold and rainy, and if you've ever visited a landfill, you know it's not exactly a visit to Candyland. But one of her sentences read: "They traipsed through the mud." I read it twice. Traipsed? I brought it back to her. It was an error, plain and simple. She meant to write: "They trudged through the mud."

Lightning. Lightning bug.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

"So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the writer who reads."
Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

By now, every Who down in Whoville has surely heard of the amazing Dr. Seuss, the man who twisted and turned words this way and that, making reading fun again. His books, from Horton Hears a Who to Green Eggs and Ham to How the Grinch Stole Christmas are perennial favorites.

But I didn't know until I read his biography page that there are a few grown-up tales behind these children's stories. It seems the late Theodor Geisel wasn't just a children's writer. He was a writer's writer. He took on issues and challenges. He worked hard to make his writing look effortless.

Green Eggs and Ham, for instance, was written on a bet that he couldn't write a book using only 50 words. (He succeeded). He wrote Cat in the Hat after there was there was outcry that kids didn't read because books were boring.

Other books take on world issues - The Lorax, obviously, is about environmentalism, and the Grinch, most could guess, is about anti-materialism. But I didn't know that The Butter Battle was about the arms race - although thinking back, I can see it, and Yertle the Turtle is a tale about anti-authoritarianism.(I may have to reread that one).

Reading Dr. Seuss as a child (and an adult) I never knew all that. I just knew I loved his books. I still do. They're fun to listen to, and they're actually hilarious to read out loud. My kids love them, and I love reading them. Horton, that crazy elephant, has actually brought me to tears more than once with his loyalty to that silly egg, and I don't cry about just anything, you know.

So here's one more bit of trivia about Dr. Seuss - and this might be the one thing that surprised me the most. His first book, And to Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street, was rejected by publishers 27 times.

You don't need a Kindle to read an Ebook

So you can't afford one of those fancy, portable Ebook reading devices? Don't worry. You can still get in on the Ebook craze.

Ebooks are cheap (sometimes free), they're portable (you can put them onto a USB stick and carry them on your keychain), and all you need to read them is your computer. You can download them into the format of your choice.

Many people (me, too) believed for a long time that Ebooks could only be downloaded onto a Kindle or a Reader or a Nook or any of those devices. And I'm not knocking those - I think they're great. But they're also pricey, at least right now. In fact, at this point, I think I could either afford the device or the books, and I'm choosing the books.

The truth is when you buy an Ebook on a site like www.smashwords.com, you can choose your format. Smashwords, for instance, will even guide you if you're not sure what you're looking for. If you just want to download a PDF file, save it to your desktop and read it off your computer - or print it off chapter by chapter and take it work - no problem. There's even a version for those little Palm devices that so many of us are addicted to. And on most sites, you only have to buy once. So if you do opt for a Kindle mid-chapter, you can download another format for free.

Give it a try. There are lots of digital bookstores out there; you might find a new, affordable addiction. Now, ahem, at Smashwords, I've heard good things about that Death on Deadline book for a mere $4.99, but there are actually thousands of titles to choose from. More are added every day.

Happy Reading!

So print is dead? I beg to differ

It was snowing. Big, fat, white flakes were falling hard and fast.

It was early, too, and I was driving carefully, on the lookout for those errant icy patches that can send your car into a tailspin before you know it. But so far, so good - although the snow was relentless, it didn't really seem to be sticking.

That's why the erratic behavior of the driver in front of me was so puzzling. He was in a late-model Saturn, and was weaving, just now and then, from side to side. If it hadn't been early morning, I would have thought I was behind a driver who was just a wee bit tipsy.

He'd straddle the left lane just a little bit, then over correct himself, then drive normally for a few blocks. Going over a bridge, he made a scary trip to the right side, way too close to the edge, spitting dirty snow and ice onto the cars and trucks traveling the freeway below.

I couldn't imagine he was hitting icy patches. If so, he was having quite a spell of bad luck. Because I hadn't hit any at all. I kept watching him - at a safe distance behind. And he kept up his strange little pattern.

Then it came time for me to make a right turn, while he continued on straight ahead. I pulled up alongside him at the light, and ventured a look inside his car. Instantly, I discovered the cause of his imbalance.

He was reading. Yep, reading. Not text messages, not a map, but a real book. Well, it looked like a book, at least - although I couldn't see the title from my viewpoint. As I stared through my driver's window, my mouth quite literally agog, he looked over at me. His expression was hard to decipher. He didn't look embarrassed or chagrined. No, it was actually more like the look a deep-in-thought library patron gives you when you accidentally bump the table. Distracted, maybe, or perhaps a little puzzled.

I hope my thoughts were written all over my face. I hope he could see that while I was incredibly happy he loved to read, I was extremely unhappy and surprised he had chosen this time to do so. And I hoped, above all, that he would close his book and focus on getting to his destination without hurting himself or anyone else.

But I had to smile the rest of the way to work. So they say print is dead, huh? I beg to differ.

'This is a pen!'

Sitting in the darkened movie theater, I felt goosebumps travel down my arms as I watched the movie trailer.

On the screen, a teacher turns to his frightened student, placing a tool in his hands. "Take this to defend yourself," he tells him. "It's a powerful weapon. Use it only in times of great distress."

The teen looks down at the gift, disbelief written all over his face "This is a pen!" he says, somewhat frantically. "This is a pen!"

It is, of course, the preview for "Percy Jones and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief," and I won't be giving anything away if I tell you that the pen, in this case, is more than a pen - it's a magic sword.

But I thought it clever nonetheless. Any writer worth his ink knows pens don't need to turn into swords. Their power is within. Of course, a pen wouldn't protect Percy against Medusa in this mythological adventure, but who knows, maybe it was a few jagged barbs from one's ink that made her that mean and unforgiving in the first place. (Okay, okay, that and the fact she was changed into a hideous creature with writhing snakes for hair.)

Regardless, the power of words is breathtaking. Everyone has words that have changed their life - from "I love you" to "Go away,' to "Never again." Words can transform, lift, wound and cut. Most of us learned long ago to wield our pens wisely.

I can't wait to see the Percy Jackson movie this weekend, get lost in his adventure and take it all with a sense of good fun. And I hope more than one person smiles, at least on the inside, when Percy realizes just how powerful a pen can be.