Rejection…

What do Melville, Orwell, Hemingway, Clancy, and Rowling have in common? You’re correct if you say they’re well known authors. But they’ve also been rejected by agents and publishers. Most of our lives are filled with good and bad events. Some of the latter correspond to rejection. For an author, rejections are especially painful.

According the NY Times, Melville was asked, “Does it have to be a whale?” Orwell’s essay on British cooking was rejected because someone didn’t like his recipe for...