Brian Stableford Quotes

This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address.

As for advice for aspiring authors, the best I can give is to be brave. It sounds like a simple enough thing, but it's not. Rejection is such an integral part of this journey, and it never goes away.

I kept sending out stories and getting rejected.

It's a shame publishers send rejection slips. Writers should get something more substantial than a slip that amounts to a pile of confetti. Publishers should send something heavier. Editors should send out rejection bricks, so at the end of a lot of years, you would have something to show besides a wheelbarrow of rejection slips. Instead you could have enough bricks to build a house.

My first novel was rejected by some of the most eminent publishers in the world. Starting again was a real wrench.

I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, 'To hell with you.'

You do it a day at a time. You just put your rejection slips in a shoebox and tell yourself one day you're going to autograph them and sell them at auction.

An artist's sensitivity to criticism is, at least in part, an effort to keep unimpaired the zest, or confidence, or arrogance, which he needs to make creation possible; or an instinct to climb through his problems in his own way as he should, and must.

Engrave this in your brain: EVERY WRITER GETS REJECTED. You will be no different.

I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won't publish me, the bookshops won't carry my books, the critics won't write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.

Send it to someone who can publish it. And if they won't publish it, send it to someone else who can publish it! And keep sending it! Of course, if no one will publish it, at that point you might want to think about doing something other than writing.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Save your rejections so that later when you are famous you can show them to people and laugh.

You've got to really be able to accept the rejection.

If you don't like my book, write your own. If you don't think you can write a novel, that ought to tell you something. If you think you can, do. No excuses. If you still don't like my novels, find a book you do like.

The starkest rejection letter might be followed by a million-dollar advance. Don't let rejection start to look the same as failure.

I'm not confident, and yet I'm oddly confident. You have to have a certain amount of ego to be a writer in the first place, and to write things that might be controversial. I've wasted a lot of time worrying about it: am I tough enough to do it? Well, I guess, or I wouldn't have done it. The day it's too difficult for me, I guess I'll stop.

If you give up at the first rejection or the first bad review, you will never make it in publishing.

As a writer, you can't allow yourself the luxury of being discouraged and giving up when you are rejected, either by agents or publishers. You absolutely must plow forward.

I got nice rejections explaining that historical fiction was a difficult sell. But I kept trying.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Rejection happens, and you have to have a thick skin about it, which is hard. You can't be overly sensitive about people not picking you.

There are no guarantees in the music field. There's a lot of rejection, a lot of criticism and a lot of disappointment. You have to be prepared for that. And after 1973, it just wasn't happening for me.

Piece by piece I sent my first book of poems to American Poetry Review and was rejected one by one.

You deal with failure - strike, strike, strike - all the time. Acting is like that. You have to have a very thick skin in a way - your hair is too dark, you're too ugly for the part, your audition wasn't good.