One of the hardest and most annoying things for a writer to endure is those unwanted rejection letters. It is a well-known fact that if a writer is going to become a writer receiving an income, then he or she will need to learn that the rejection letter is a major part of the business.
Some of the writers that Poetry Highway (http://www.poetryhighway.com) has worked with often request that we do not even let them see the rejection letters. They would much prefer seeing only the positive ones. To honor them, we do just that… we hold them in a file and if they ever want the letters, we send them. On the other hand, there are writers who want to hear every critique and every publisher comment. These writers grow from the sometimes joyful and sometimes painful knowledge they receive.
There are times when a publisher is on the lookout for a certain type of genre or type of theme. When this occurs, the publisher rejects everything but that type of writing… your work shows up and they might not even read it. Consequently, a letter goes out saying “your work does not fit within our style at the time.”
Below is our list of very famous writers who were once rejected. Knowing the rich and famous had a rough start also helps us to gain courage. Poetry Highway places this list of writers here in order to show you that you are not alone and that the rejections do not always have to do with the quality of the writer or the work rejected. These writers were first rejected, only later to end up not only published, but also well known and paid for their works.
- George Bernard Shaw
- Stephen Crane
- Ernest Hemingway
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- Alexander Pope
- Lord Byron
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Walt Whitman
- Ezra Pound
- T. S. Eliot
- Henry David Thoreau
- Rudyard Kipling
Now doesn’t seeing this list provide you with more courage and tenacity to continue working and becoming the writer you always dreamed you would be?
