Lee Klein has posted his latest batch of his famously fucked Rejection Letters over at Eyeshot. If you've never read these before, they are always entertaining. I particularly like the less over-the-top honesty of this one:
There's something about your language that seems really young, an innocence to it. What you sent isn't really a story. It's a handful of sentences sort of about a dog, like you maybe read some Lydia Davis and then saw a dog and started writing? Maybe I'd suggest to really only bother writing something that seems necessary to write, not to screw around with anything other than what must be written, and also while writing keep in mind that you're trying to affect someone you've never seen, either make them laugh or agitated or randy or sad? There's an innocent manneredness to what you sent that seems like a barrier between you and writing something good, or enjoying and gaining anything from the whole process of writing maybe? Write because you have something to say, is what I'm saying, and try to make it affect another person. But thanks for sending this and hope all's well!
The others are more mean/ridiculous/weird/funny/random.
Lee Klein was the first person to ever publish one of my stories. He is also a good writer.
I have received a decent handful of form rejection from big places this week. It doesn't even phase me anymore. I kind of like it.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
That one is very honest, espically in how it kind of tries to reach beyond the "yeah, this isn't going to work". I just sent out my first few submissions for publishing this past week, I'm not sure what to expect in response, I do hope over time I can have your sentiment of "just brushing shit off the shoulder, no big deal".
haha these are nice.
i love getting rejection letters. i think it's funny. i'm not sure why.
Post a Comment