A Quote by J. R. Moehringer
I've been trying to write a book since before I was old enough to vote, and I've collected many rejection slips from publishers and magazines. I used to keep them all stuck to my refrigerator, with magnets, but an ex-girlfriend told me they were depressing, and defeatist, and suggested I take them down. A very wise suggestion on her part.
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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.
I've got a folder full of rejection slips that I keep. Know why? Because those same editors are now calling my agent hoping I'll write a book or novella for them. Things change. A rejection slip today might mean a frantic call to your agent in six months.
Nobody told me how hard it was going to be to get published. I wrote four novels that nobody wanted, sent them out all over, collected hundreds and hundreds of rejection slips.
I knew where the magnets were, behind the gyprock, and the magnets were very powerful. I think they had to be powerful for me, otherwise the reader wouldn't have a reciprocal experience. But I was very careful to bury them deeply, deeply in the plaster and paint over them. I didn't want anybody to directly access them, and that's gradually changed for me.
Before everything, I used to do this thing when I was upset-I used to take all my feelings and push them down inside me. It was like they were garbage and I was compacting it to get more in. I felt like I could keep pushing all my feelings down into my socks and I wouldn't have to worry about them. I don't think I do that anymore.
When it was suggested that I write a memoir I said, 'I'm not old enough. I'm not distinguished enough.' But I went home and sat down to write, and the material for the book just came flooding into my hands.
In the two books I wrote, even though they were written in a sort of Joycean gobbledegook, there's many knocks at religion and there is a play about a worker and a capitalist. I've been satirising the system since my childhood. I used to write magazines in school and hand them around.
I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.
When my sister and I were very young, my father used to tell us fairy stories that he'd made up. My mother was always telling him that he should write them down, but he would say, 'Well, they've all been done before. There are so many blooming books in the world - why should I write another one?'
I didn't have a lot of skin care products when I was a kid - my parents were very au naturale - and I think I was about 9 years old when my girlfriend told me she used Biore. I was like, 'Hmm, never heard of it.' So my mom took me to the store, and I picked out five different things and have been literally using it ever since.
I was very lucky to befriend many authors before even signing with an agent, and they were all so supportive of me when I told them I was in the middle of my first book.
I wrote for twelve years and collected 250 rejection slips before getting any fiction published, so I guess outside reinforcement isn't all that important to me.
[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?" I notice that I don't hear from them much lately.
My publishers are wonderful because they have let me write what I wanted to. They're wise enough to know that, with any author who's not simply writing formulas - who's trying to create something new - pressuring them to do something for market purposes almost always backfires. I can't imagine working under those circumstances, actually.
It's going to be labor-intensive and time-consuming, but you need to take all the books down and put them on the floor. Take them down and spread them in one area. Physically pick each book up, one by one. If the book inspires you, keep it. If not, it goes out. That's the standard by which you decide.
I learned very early on not to speak to my folk from on high, but to get down with them, beside them, showing them how to act rather than telling them. And I suggested that they should do the same with one another: that they didn't need a book of rules to tell them what to do and what not to do, but experience and action.
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