Rejections

Lately, I’ve been thinking that perhaps I might as well reinforce the thoughts from my www.ohno.com landing page with some examples of what I was getting at when I wrote the following:

“….while my work brought some attention, it came with writer’s sweat and truckloads of rejections.”

A writer can spend hours, put his or her heart and soul into a piece, have it all dusted up and copy edited only to have (should an agent or publisher bother to respond) it come flying back by computer or US mail with a message that we can recite by heart.

Dear Mr. Cairns

Many thanks for sharing your work with (agency, publisher) however it does not suit our needs at this time, etc. etc. etc.

Now, having been the target for a number of these messages/rejections for some 40 plus years and having had the opportunity to speak to young (and old) writers who might clearly be damaged by these blunt suggestions that I “take my pen hand for a hike,” it has been my habit to open my talks by asking the group of writers what their definition of a serious author might be.

Typically, the response will be, “Getting published!”

And that’s when I open a cardboard file and spread a hefty number of rejection letters on the table top. I follow this visual aid by (always trying to keep my ego in check) holding up my first published novel and saying, “This is a published novel, what most writer’s think is the proof of the writer. Well, it is and it isn’t. A greater example, in my opinion, would be all these rejection letters I’ve received over the years. The energy, passion and mental toughness to write this much, to have caused this many “thanks but no thanks” responses are in fact the badge of a writer.

And then I take them along for that verbal bumpy ride to publishing with me---the good, the bad and the ugly.

The young lady in the back wonders what was my most hurtful rejection?

Laughter ensues!

This is a tough one as I want to be sure my fellow writers in attendance don’t mistake the toughest rejection for what may in fact been the most deserving, albeit hurtful----and in this case one of my first and very worst efforts.

I wrote a golf (“humor”) story called Happy Farm and must have (this was snail mail days) fired it off to a dozen publishers. Every submission ended with my loving wife, almost tearful, calling me at work and saying, “I’m so sorry but Happy Farm came back!”

Early days, thin skin, broken heart!

I was very naive back then, wasn’t even sure that big name magazines even accepted freelance material. And when the first story I sent to Sports Illustrated came back I saw the editor’s name and gave Ken Rudeen at SI a call, asking him what was wrong with the story. He probably did not remember their form letter regarding this work as they received hundreds of submissions weekly, but he said, “Well, perhaps nothing, just didn’t suit our needs, keep reading the magazine and try us again.”

Okay, although I didn’t know it at the time, that wasn’t a “don’t darken our doors again” rejection.

I would end up publishing numerous stories with Sports Illustrated and SI for kids. But it wasn’t all “bless you my child” acceptances and one rejection (a learning experience by the way) came from Bob Creamer, a senior editor who wrote one of my favorite books, Babe. I submitted a piece about a national cribbage tournament and the winner was a Boston guy named Eddie Bowes. I, not knowing better, wrote all of Eddie’s quotes in the article in a Boston accent.  Creamer hated this so much that he suggested that I not “try SI again!”

I took his advice about the use of dialects/accents in dialogue but continued to present to SI, selling more than a dozen pieces.

Now, the story ends later with me meeting several SI editors that I had a great working relationship with---Linda Verigan and Margaret Seick. They took me in the Time Life Building for a tour of SI. It was like I’d landed in  mecca. As the visit wound down, we passed an office with a plate glass window and there was a man working at his desk. 

Margaret said, “Oh, look, there’s Bob Creamer, I’m sure you’d love to meet Bob.”

And I said, “I’d love to but my wife and friends and I have matinee tickets for MY ONE AND ONLY and so I better get going.”  

So, writer’s beware, one never knows when a rejector will pop up.

Oh, here’s one of note from my “storied” past. I will write about the long hard road that leads to signing with a literary agent later but when I finally signed on with Jane Wilson, with the New York JCA Literary Agent, well Jane was a gem. I had sent Jane a novel that she really liked called Behind The Eight Ball. I knew it had gone to committee for consideration with St. Martin’s. So, I get a call from my wife who suggests that I sit down because she has wonderful news. “St. Martin’s is going to publish Behind The Eightball,” she said.

Now, for writers this is the anti-rejection moment. I was ecstatic and then I heard the sob. My wife was actually crying. “I’m so sorry I got so excited that I didn’t read the second paragraph of the letter. What they said was that that there was a day that they would have published this novel.”

This sadly, WAS NOT, the day. And in fact, that day wouldn’t come for two years when that very publisher, St. Martin’s agreed to publish, The Comeback Kids, a baseball novel. What ever happened to Behind the Eightball? Filed away here beside my desk it remains a writer’s rejection memory as it never managed to crawl between a publisher’s book covers. 

Now, with all these rejection letters please know that there have been editors who have included a very positive paragraph. They suggested that although the piece may not suit their needs that this was in fact a “publishable piece” and that I should move it along to another book publisher or magazine editor.

This actually happened and I will forever be indebted to the understanding and caring editor who took the time to use that all important industry word---publishable!

One of the toughest forms of rejection comes with an acceptance. I had this happen several times. A national magazine sent me to Detroit to write a feature story about a guy named Jeff Odenwald, a baseball PT Barnum who was not only the first PR guy to hire the San Diego chicken he was (among other promotions) the first to come up with Funny Nose night.  I wrote the piece, submitted it and was informed that it would run after the Olympics. 

I called my subject, thrilling him with the news. Then an internal one-on-one competition inside the magazine for the managing editors position took place and the winning editor cancelled a great number of his competition’s stories. And so, I had to call my subject and TRY to explain the situation.

Note to writers: I took this story and placed it with the subject’s alma mater, the Ohio State University magazine. This wasn’t the heavy weight that I’d written it for but in retrospect they did give it-- along with cartoon art---a very nice play.

Then there was the time that I was given the thumbs up on a submission of a little girl, a young swimmer with national creds, to Sports Illustrated’s FACES IN THE CROWD.

I was given a date for the magazine, told her father (who was a prominent NC State professor) they took Emily out to dinner to celebrate and again, the copy and photo were cancelled. Fortunately, I was able to get with an understanding editor (see there really is such a thing) and amends were made—copy and photo running---in a later issue.

I’m thinking this might be a good time to hop off the old rejection train---but I do so with a warning to all my fellow writers.  One never knows where an editor of sorts might be lurking. Like my very own mother for instance. When my novel The Comeback Kids came out, she caught a visiting minister from her church giving the Sports Illustrated review of the novel a quick look-see. That evening she called me to tell me how embarrassing it was to have her minister see what SI had called in that review, “….funny and profane!”

And having dealt with and dodged reviews and rejections for years I informed my mother that she could tell her minister that I had just received an apologetic phone call from an SI editor saying that we were dealing with a typo.  The magazine had intended to say that the book was “funny and PROFOUND!” 

Her response? She opted for a rejection.