When Your Persistence Disappears

Courage to create ebbs and flows, sometimes smothered by the events around us or the chaos within us. For this week’s post, I will be brief, because holidays are upon us for many, and I want to just give you a little boost to get through them and not neglect yourself creatively.

This is my little collection of famous writer rejections, something I’ve been gathering for years. Many sites exist with others, if you want to search, but here are my favorites.

These writers persisted. They had busy lives, many of them. They faced odds—some really big odds—and their worlds were chaos, often, like ours.

But they kept at their craft. Kept submitting. Kept trying.

What keeps you from trying? Sometimes we’re flattened by too much negativity coming in. We lack the will to push forward.

But the ones who really believed in their stories? A few are listed below, along with their happy endings.

My research came from many sites online, and particularly two, which I thank below.

Enjoy whatever boost you get from this!

• Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate Di Camillo--397 rejections (and it became a movie)

• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle--97 rejections (and it won the Newbery Medal for best children's book of 1963; last I read, it was in its 69th printing)

• Cinder Edna by Ellen Jackson--40 rejections (and it has won multiple awards and sold 150,000 hard copies)

• Judy Blume says she received "nothing but rejections" for 2 years

• Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot--17 rejections

• Harry Potter novels by J.K. Rowling--rejected by 9 publishers

• The Diary of Anne Frank--16 rejections (and now more than 30 million copies are in print)

• Dr. Seuss books--more than 15 rejections

• Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach--140 rejections

• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell--38 rejections

• Watership Down by Richard Adams--26 rejections

• Dune by Frank Herbert--nearly 20 rejections
  
  Thanks to these websites for cool information—check them out!
  http://www.debbieohi.com/personal/rejections.html

  http://www.richardpettinger.com/interests/rejections-of-famous-writers

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week, my exercise suggestion is in two parts.

1. Take a walk. Get away by yourself for a short time, however long you can, and think about your creative life. Take your phone or a notepad and pen, take photos of what inspires you visually or record some images and ideas you get.

2. Google one of these authors listed above and read about their creative lives. It’s a huge reality check, to learn the struggles that other writers go through, especially ones that seem to have it all. What did you learn?