Thursday Thoughts: Rejection Letters
I suspect that if I did submit my poetry book to a publishing house, that would be the letter I would receive. But there are some famous rejection letters no one has ever seen before. Like this one:
Dear Nostradamus,
Thank you for your submission of prophecies, but considering you could not predict our rejection of your manuscript, although we do agree that the quality of penmanship was exemplary (especially the big letters at the beginning of each chapter), we will have to decline.
Best of luck in your future endeavors.
If you are a writer or avid reader, you may be familiar with the book, A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, by the 19th century American, Timothy Dexter. Not because it’s brilliant and well-written, but due to the fact its was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, random capitalizations, along with the lack of punctuation.
His rejection letter might read as this:
Dear Mr. Dexter,
WTF!? We read your manuscript, well we tried to, and honestly we have no words to describe the frustration we felt as we perused the pages.
You might want to hire a qualified editor (we have conveniently added a list of suggested editors at the end of this letter) before submitting again.
It was published in 1802, with subsequent editions containing the following addition by Dexter:
Translation: Here’s the punctuation you requested. Put it where you want.
Want to read it? Project Gutenberg: A Pickle for the Knowing Ones
Leon
Leon Stevens is a multi-genre author, composer, guitarist, songwriter, and an artist, with a Bachelor of Music and Education. He published his first book of poetry, Lines by Leon: Poems, Prose, and Pictures in January 2020, followed by a book of original classical guitar compositions, Journeys, and a short story collection of science fiction/post-apocalyptic tales called The Knot at the End of the Rope and Other Short Stories. His newest publications are the novella trilogy, The View from Here, which is a continuation of one of his short stories, a new collection of poetry titled, A Wonder of Words, and his latest sci-fi mystery, Euphrates Vanished.
My new book page: http://books.linesbyleon.com/
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