Rejection Thread

[amuse]

so the first time i got a rejection slip in the mail, i was tickled. i mean, i've had wow - three poems published. and it was new, and exciting - "yay, i know how this feels now," but there've been at least 4 that i've received - "poets and writers" mag has these poetry/fiction contests you can enter, and it's getting old!!! just disgusting really.
grrrr!!!!!!!!
yay i feel better. :D


so i'm sure we've all had our beauty queen/rocket science moments, share those by all means, but what about the flubb-ups?

[ajoe]

:sick: I got rejection slips all the time. It's my expertise.

[amuse]

right, like what good are self-addressed stamped envelopes anyway!

what were you doing that you got slips?

[ajoe]

Short stories for children's magazines. But that was a couple years ago. Haven't been writing lately due to enrollment in college. (College papers were killing me already; why would I write anything else on my free will?)

[imthefoolonthehill]

oh... I thought this was going to be about being rejected when asking people to dances or out to pizza or to movies or... yeah... I dont have any experience in the POETRY or LITERARY rejection field...

[subterranean]

well why dont you share your rejections from gals also fool..

well amuse, at least they sent letters to you and let you know. i never got any feedback letters for the works that i sent, not even a rejection letters :(
i dont know what they did to my writings, probably just threw it right away to trash can

[amuse]

it was only because i sent self addressed stamped envelopes. like, why did i do that, lol!

of course it's an all around rejection thread, fool.
ooh that sounds wrong. :D
cool entry in "leaving your mark," btw, old man fool.

hey ajoe, do you have your stories lying around?

[Kirsty]

Rejection means that you actually had the balls to do whatever it was that you wanted to do. I usually find the best way to avoid rejection is to be totally chickensh*t and pretend that you wouldn't have wanted to do those things anyway!
I did enter a poetry competition the other day though....was kind of fun writing anyway so who cares.
Fool, I thought that also....., I'm a hopeless case though, because I develop crushes I guess, hate that word, on random people that I see all the time on the bus or in the street and oh not forgetting the swimming coach at the pools. I'll probably never meet them, and it seems too creepy to go up to them...anyway best of luck to you...as a girl I know that we can be pretty harsh!

[EAP]

I thought this was the other sort of rejection thread. :p

[ajoe]

hey ajoe, do you have your stories lying around?

Yup, in one of the many boxes in my room. Don't get me wrong, I'm very organized, I just don't know which box contains what.

Hey amuse, have you always written in all-lowercase or did you just start recently? (Seems out of character. :p)

[amuse]

i'm lazy! :D also that's how i write poetry.

[imthefoolonthehill]

I dont think there is room, sub... otherwise i would... there has to be some wort of space limit for this forum...

[Kahrey]

I have gotten two rejection letters: one for poetry and one for a short story. I'm actually waiting on one now, but it's been almost three months. I'm wondering if it was so bad that they threw it straight away with the envelopes and everything!

[subterranean]

I dont think there is room, sub... otherwise i would... there has to be some wort of space limit for this forum...

grandpa fool, you just need to make one
no sweat

[mono]

Kirsty said it best: to avoid rejection, never submit (like me). I have written enough poetry to fill a few decent-sized books, plus a couple of plays; but I feel far too shy to even attempt publication. In the Kantian sense, I merely write as an ends and never as a means (not to sound like I judge you all). Worry not, regardless, amuse, you have one fan whose name begins with 'm' and ends with 'ono.'

[amuse]

i won't embarrass you by asking you to show your stuff here, but how wonderful that you can write plays. when did you start? um, may i ask what the themes were? and i really like William Stafford (just lost a long reply that i need to retype), out of curiousity did he influence you, and what poets &/or genres do you 'specially like?

btw, :blush: thank you.

[baddad]

Reject: from Latin meaning to 'throw back': to refuse to take, agree to, use, believe, to discard.

Nowhere in this descripton of the base word for rejection is there reference to self-worth. Believe it.

randomly ejected thought number two: The ability to write is a gift of great power and is its own reward. Having a work rejected (see above) by one or two individuals is hardly a consensus on the quality of a piece. I'm sure if one was to take any kind of a poll, and only two or five or ten respondents were consulted, that the value of the poll would be quite obvious: zero value. In a world of billions, two, or a few, are irrelevant as far as critiques go.

As for how to deal with rejection........I read somewhere that adversity doesn't build character, it shows character....

I am so long winded that I dare not regale with any of my own experiences of rejection, but will only agree that it certainly has many aquaintances with all who have or will ever live. I find this immensely comforting.......and I can't decide on which icon to use to display this comfort, but all I do know is that the dancing pelvic thrusting banana may not suffice...

[Koa]

well as you might now if you read my stuff about it in the poetry section, or my whinings here for that matters, i've bene rejected by a guy i liked, even if according to some people girls are never rejected, only guys are (of course it's a theory i've heard from boys cos us girls are soooo naaaasty ;))...

as for having work rejected that's a risk i dont take cos i dont like to show much of my stuff so im not aiming at publication (if i'll ever manage to write anything again, that is) but once in the school magazine they didnt include an article that was the best one i've ever written, just because the guy who was working on putting things together forgot...it annoyed me quite a lot, also because if was published a few months later and was sooo out of date (you cant talk of the feelings of the beginning of school in january when school starts in september...)

[mono]

Thank you for your surprising compliment, amuse. True, playwrights nowadays are a rare breed, but I try to remain quiet and modest (and shy).
To answer your questions, I have one play written (a romantic tragedy [very Shakespearean-esque]) called Poets in Love; the title explains an easily outlined plot. The greater portion of the play, very modernized, focuses on religious pressure (which, if I may say without sounding offensive, can result in intense pressure, depending on the people practicing, not the religion), an instated draft (and dodging it), a misunderstood "murder," art, friendship, and all bowing to love expressed through poetry. Many characters, looooong play (1000+ lines).
My second play, still untitled, is a comedy set in a "haunted" house in a historical part of a European country. The diverse, but few, characters become led to believe their hostel is haunted, but the wacky, drunk, Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe-obsessed, host refuses to tell which room. Each character claims to have his/her room haunted by sightings and "metaphysical" perceptions. The guests stay one more night, regardless, due to poor weather, and have a peaceful evening, as opposed to the former. The next morning, all guests depart, and receive all of the real information about the house being haunted ("the host always plays these tricks"), and get a logical explanation for ever sighting. Ironically, the host died during the peaceful night -- the one evening there should have existed any haunting. Though I personally believe in ghosts, I intend to show the creation of them through the imagination and faculty of fear.
Both I wrote (and write) in classical, rhyming form (poetry, too). To name a few of my influences, in both fiction (plays) and poetry: Dante Alighieri, John Keats, Sylvia Plath, William Stafford, Theodore Roethke, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, William Shakespeare (of course), Brontë sisters, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Giovanni Boccaccio, O. Henry, all of the naturalist writers (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Ellery Channing), Rumi, Ben Jonson, and all of the classic Greek and Roman writers.
Additionally, my list of influencing philosophers/thinkers extends far beyond, which, I apologize, I shall save on account of avoiding carpal tunnel.
Perhaps, in the near future, I will post some poetry, despite my bashfulness, but never plays, especially due to length.
While on the subject, who are some of your largest influences, amuse?

[mono]

Oops! I forgot to include one of my largest influences in all of writing: D.H. Lawrence.

[amuse]

Interesting...Poets in Love sounds very complex. also your second play; i like the haunted comedy theme. :)

would you believe i don't know what a naturalist writer is. although, since you've included emerson and thoreau, i can hazard a guess. i'm only familiar with a few of the writers you've mentioned...quite enjoying our greek unit in class, and rumi - haven't read more than one poem, but remember it was really - well, simple and pure, like freshly laundered hearts. which sounds really strange, but i'm not sure how else to put it.

my influences? :blush: in my teens, cosmopolitan, at age 6, my stepmother, (she wrote in free verse and ended one memorable poem
"this was supposed
to have ended
three stanzas ago."
richard brautigan, also from my teens, more recently kazuko shiraishi, and stevie wonder; on the '76 album "songs in the key of life," he messed around like crazy with the grammar/phrasing of his dedication/conversation. it was so spontaneous, warm, loving. i miss how artists used to write stuff on the inside jackets of records, and how the back of their records would sometimes have bios. oh yeah, e.e. cumming's, because at 17 years old i found him to be a literary picasso.
usually though, i just write from one phrase that resounds and revolves [around] itself. once it's done that long enough for me to write it down and make some sort of something there it is, for long or short, better or worse.

...school has once again sucked my creativity. for a couple of months now i've wanted to write about little brown birds hopping through holes in barbed wire fences. (their freedoms.) but it's not there yet. one day!

[Kirsty]

All you guys are really cool! I love hearing you talk about your writing.
Very inspirational. Do you find that when you have read so much, that it is hard to find your own thoughts? I mean with so many great influences and everything, do you ever feel overwhelmed?
Saddest rejection story : John Kennedy Toole, committed suicide because he couldn't get his work published and then went on to win the damn Pulitzer prize....!!

[mono]

Oh, amuse! You reminded me that I also forgot E.E. Cummings in my long list of influences; especially recently have I enjoyed his work. Your comment sounded best: a literary Picasso.
What I call a 'naturalist writer' mainly consists of a group of thinkers including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Margaret Fuller, and, some may consider, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle. They all seemed to share a common philosophy thinking nature and transcendentalism somehow connected, often divinely.
And thank you for your kindness, Kirsty. Often I do feel overwhelmed with so many influences and with so much diversity. Arthur Schopenhauer, a German cynical philosopher, wrote a few words about your exact thought - that reading too much may impede some brilliant, original thoughts of one's own, considering that, while reading, the writer does much of the thinking, despite the reader's interpretations.
Anyway, I'm rambling. Amuse, never let a petty rejection affect your confidence; if you enjoy the art of writing and rhetoric as an end in itself, the gratification of literature comes naturally. Good luck!

[Koa]

All you guys are really cool! I love hearing you talk about your writing.
Very inspirational. Do you find that when you have read so much, that it is hard to find your own thoughts? I mean with so many great influences and everything, do you ever feel overwhelmed?

i think its the opposite, you get more and more ideas...

[subterranean]

Hi Koa, how have u been :wave:

Sub