Month: January 2018

You’re a lovely person. Simply charming. I mean that, I really do. You read my blog and leave nice comments and buy my books and write like you can’t go wrong. But I have to tell you:

“It’s not you. It’s me.”

In short, that’s what a literary rejection means. It’s not about YOU. Remember, YOU are lovely! It’s about the editor and whether the proposed project fits with her taste and imprint list.

Subjective, it’s all subjective! One editor’s rejection is another editor’s next book!

But editors and agents often provide writers with rejection statements that we want to understand. We feel the need to analyze, to determine what we can do better. But don’t over-analyze. Sometimes a rejection is just a way of saying “no, it’s not for me.”

Here is a list of common rejections heard by picture book writers (and other writers), plus an interpretation of what…

The Fault in Our Stars, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, Paper Towns, and Looking for Alaska are radiant novels by John Green. His newest YA, Turtles All The Way Down, is like a vibrantly colored Hubble photograph of a misty galaxy spiraling above us, complete with the black hole every galaxy contains.

The question for Aza Holmes, the sixteen-year-old protagonist, is whether to let herself spiral inward toward the darkness within her mind or to stream outward along the ever enlarging spiral. Her anxiety issues and OCD are offset by her bond with lifelong best friend Daisy. Friendships of depth and warmth populate this story and when Daisy proposes that she and Aza try to solve the mystery of the missing local billionaire in order to claim a $100,000 reward, Aza reconnects with the absent man’s son Davis. Aza and Davis met years ago at “Sad Camp”…