Hi all, was just wondering who accumulated the most rejection slips before getting a story published. I'm counting total rejection slips and also the number from one particular market. I'm new to this, so I'm up to four rejections, no acceptances.
Do you know of Jack London? He wrote quite a few books, including "White Fang" and "Call of the Wild". Apparently he was rejected 600 times before publishing his first novel. All I can say is this: Perserverance is the key. EDIT: reread your question, so I'm not sure if you want numbers from people here on the forum, or from other authors. I'd be really impressed if someone here made it to the 600 mark though.
Hi Evelyanin, yeah both is good. 600 rejections - London must have had a lot of faith in himself to persevere through that!
I read once in an old Guinness Book of Records (probably from the 1970s) that the British crime fiction writer John Creasey received over 740 rejection slips before his first acceptance. That opened a floodgate, though - he published over 600 books, including 29 in one year alone! (He used a lot of pen names.)
Hi Viktor You are doing well to be sending stuff off each week. It is a while since I sent anything off and 'yes' it was rejected. I knew it would be. But, I was hoping for feed-back. I did not get any.
Hi Trilby, yeah I was inspired by researching Philip K Dick (my favourite author). He once received 17 rejection slips on a single day. His response was to send them all out again. I am also interested to know the record for number of rejections for a single story/novel before it was accepted.
The important point is that the number of rejections is irrelevant. You keep trying, and revising, and learning, until you get an acceptance. We don't need threads for seeing who can come up with the biggest count. If that is what this thread turns into, it will be closed.
