Advice about Rejection from a Current Reject

I’ll sometimes see someone like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling send out a message (or Tweet out a Tweet) of hope to struggling writers. “I’ve been rejected this-and-this many times, but I eventually made it. So don’t worry. You just have to keep going.”

(I’m paraphrasing here. I’m fairly certain they were more eloquent than I was.)

Their advice of perseverance is supposed to make you feel better about getting rejected yourself. You’re supposed to say, “Stephen King once got rejected by agents and publishers too. Just like me. One day, I’m going to catch a break just like him.”

Problem is, my own thought process goes a little something like this:

Holy shit. What the fuck. If Stephen motherfuckin’ King got rejected a gazillion times before he got published, what possible chance do I have?!

The answer is none. I have no chance.

Or rather, I have the slimmest of slim chances because I don’t want to commit to being a fatalist.

I know that words of comfort from seasoned writers are supposed to be…well, words of comfort, but I have a really hard time digesting them as such. I seriously look up to writers like Stephen King. Talent just oozes out of every paragraph he writes. My writing just doesn’t compare. I know it doesn’t. My friends might tell me that I’m being too hard on myself, but I know I’m only being realistic and self-aware.

I’ve read what I’ve written, and I’ve read what Stephen King has written. There’s no comparison.

Surprisingly, this isn’t supposed to be a pity party.

I didn’t want to be a writer because of the perks of “making it.” (Though I’m sure those perks are nice.) Writing has always been a labor of love for me. That phrase, “labor of love,” is a common one. It means you’re doing something not because of what you might earn for it, but because you actually enjoy doing it. I also like to think of it as actual labor. Writing is work. It’s a skill you have to hone. Words don’t just flow out of nowhere. They’re a composition of your thoughts that you have to organize into a coherent structure that other people may enjoy taking in.

I may never end up publishing a goddamned thing. That’s a possibility that I’ve had to swallow when contemplating my choice in career. It’s a real sucky thing to think about. But I have to remind myself of a very important fact. I love what I do.

No matter how difficult or unrewarding writing is, I want to keep doing it. Writing is work, don’t get me wrong, but it’s work I love. Part of the journey of writing (gag, that sounds so corny, but just stay with me) is knowing that you’re going to have to put in a lot of effort in order to get results. And I’m willing to do that.

So every rejection letter I get, every query letter that goes unanswered, is just another notch on my belt. For my fellow writers out there who are reading this, look at your rejection letters right now with pride. Don’t look at them with the expectation that you’ll eventually be famous and can look back on them with fondness. Those rejections are accomplishments in and of themselves. They are wounding, hurt-filled proof that you are striving to reach your goal of being a writer.

Haven’t you heard that old literary adage? It’s the journey that matters, not the destination.

So, if you’re a struggling writer and you want to hear advice from another struggling writer who has in no way “made it,” this is all I have to give. Keep trying for the sake of trying and, more importantly, for the sake of writing.

Feel free to share the amount of rejections you’ve received. And by rejections, I mean badges of honor.

But the Book Is Totally Better

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard myself say that after stepping out of a theater.

But come on, it’s totally true 99.99% of the time.

The majority of movie adaptations based on books would have been better off left as words on a page. For a number of reasons, these attempts to capture the complexity and goshdarned wonderful-ness of the original books simply fail to captivate me.

My number one example of this phenomenon is the Harry Potter series.

No collection of books is so beloved as J.K. Rowling’s magical masterpiece. The world she crafted was impeccably alluring, and her characters were relatable (well, as relatable as teenage wizards could be). And while it was nice to see Harry’s world brought to life through the prowess of different filmmakers, the films still left much to be desired.

I’m okay with the first three films. I was practically a child when I saw The Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets. I went to go see the movies on a class field trip. (Isn’t that neat? We saw a movie for our class field trip.) I had read the books, and the movies were more or less as enjoyable as the books were.

By the time the fourth Harry Potter movie came along, I was spotting flaws right and left. The vast and detailed plot of The Goblet of Fire did not fit well into two hours and thirty-seven minutes. Contradictions began to run rampant with no explanation offered for them, and the lack of development for some secondary characters (and even some primary ones) physically hurt me.

That is what happens when books are made into movies. It’s like playing Russian Roulette. Occasionally you’re lucky, and the movie ends up being everything you hoped for. Other times…

There are three movies I love (technically five, but I’ll get to that later) that equaled or exceeded the books they were based on.

• The Lord of the Rings (made up of three movies)
• Cloud Atlas
• Jurassic Park

I was very young when I read The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I think I was about six years old (I liked to read, sue me). However, my parents did not think it was appropriate for me to see a PG-13 fantasy movie at such a young age. So they waited until The Fellowship of the Ring came out on DVD, and then my father watched it alongside my sister and me, supervising us to make sure we were not unduly influenced by fantasy violence. (We had so much fun; we pretended to be Ringwraiths for the next couple of days. We’d grab the pillows from our living room couch and imagine they were our horses. Then we would shriek the highest note we could reach and run around the house. Just like the Nazgûl, get it?)

J.R.R. Tolkien’s incredible work of fantasy was a deeply written collection of lore. As such, the descriptions of places and events were extremely wordy. Entire chapters could have been devoted to describing the city of Minas Tirith. Tolkien gave every race a history, and those histories went back generations. I believe that the movie captured that fantastical history and made it engrossing as hell. Instead of reading paragraphs about, say, the customs of the Rohirrim, we got to observe them in action and learn their customs through their wardrobe and behavior. Not every person could pick up the books and get into them. But the movie delivered the same content, while making it easy to understand and enjoy.

The story of how I got into Cloud Atlas is hilarious. Well, to me, at least. I was in my college computer lab working on a paper. I was listening to music through Youtube, and the trailer for Cloud Atlas came on before one of the videos . Intrigued, I paused my essay-writing to watch it. And just the initial concept of the trailer floored me. It was so cool! It’s almost indescribable. Don’t believe me? Check it out here.

Upon finding out that it was also a novel, I went to Barnes & Noble first thing that weekend and got myself a copy of the book. It was fantastic. I then only had a couple of months to wait before I could see if the movie lived up to its progenitor’s greatness.

And it did.

Some people may not agree with me. I know that a lot of film critics did not look too kindly on the movie. But I’m no film critic. I loved the book, and I loved the movie.

The interesting thing about the book version and movie version of Cloud Atlas is that they feel like different animals. The book is a ziggurat. You climbed up the first half of the story, with each timeline representing a step forward. Then you climbed down the ziggurat, each story-line getting resolved into a graceful denouement. The movie version was more like a tapestry. We got to visit each timeline one after the other, like threads interwoven together to make an intricate weave. The story feels kind of spiritual without being overly preachy. It stimulated my heart and my mind at the same time.

So, while the book and the movie feel dissimilar, they’re both equally enjoyable and, more importantly, equally meaningful. I would highly recommend both to anybody.

I was a total dinosaur kid (and am now a dinosaur adult), so it’s no wonder that Jurassic Park made it onto my list of favorite books turned into movies as well. I have nothing against the Michael Crichton novel. I think he’s a great sci-fi writer with the ability to ramp up tension like nobody’s business. But Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park had what Crichton’s book didn’t: heart.

That movie was made for people who loved dinosaurs. While the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the raptors may have been the antagonists of the movie, they were what made me sit straight in my seat with my eyes glued to the screen. Hell, anytime a dinosaur appeared, my heart skipped a beat. Alan Grant’s face when he rests his body on the triceratops is mine every time I decide to re-watch Jurassic Park. 

And that theme music! My soul sings that melody every time I go to a dinosaur museum. (Or whenever I’m doing something super majestic, which is, sadly, not often.)

So, it is possible to make a great movie based on a book. It’s just not something you see every day. If you have any recommendations for movies based on books that you like, let me know! I’m always on the look-out for fresh attempts.

What can I say? I’m a closet optimist.