A Quote by James D. Macdonald
Rejection is nature's way of telling you to write a better book.
Related Quotes
The only way to write a book, I’m fond of telling people, is to actually write a book. That’s how you write a book.
I believe that rejection is a blessing because it's the universe's way of telling you that there's something better out there.
I'm tempted to say that the top three reasons for hopelessness are rejection, rejection, rejection. But let's cast our net wider. 1) Not being able to write as well as we hoped we could. 2) Not being able to write at all. 3) Rejection.
You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.
It's always a better choice to write a new book than it is to keep pounding your head against the submissions wall with a book that's just not happening. The next book you write could be the book, the one that isn't a fight to get representation for at all.
Pain is nature's way of telling you to slow down. Death is nature's way of telling you to stop.
I always knew from the beginning that this was the only way to write Then We Came To The End - that it had to be in first - person plural if it was going to illustrate how the individual becomes part of the collective. I had no interest in writing the book in a more conventional voice. It goes back to that fascination I had with telling a story in multiple ways. It was the only choice I gave myself, really - I said "This is it, pal. If you can't tell a story this way, you're going to have to abandon the book. Write it this way or give up."
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.
The process for writing a picture book is completely different from the process of writing a chapter book or novel. For one thing, most of my picture books rhyme. Also, when I write a picture book I'm always thinking about the role the pictures will play in the telling of the story. It can take me several months to write a picture book, but it takes me several years to write a novel.
You write in songs what you're too scared to write in real life, and then you sing the songs to loads of people instead of telling it to the person you should be telling it to... Songs are a great way of dealing with those issues but kind of a coward's way as well.
Every story is flawed, every story is subject to change. Even after it is set down to print, between covers of a book, a story is not immune to alteration. People can go on telling it in their own way, remembering it the way they want. And in each telling the ending may change, or even the beginning. Inevitably, in some cases it will be worse, and in others it just might be better. A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.
The rewrites are a struggle right now. Sometimes I wish writing a book could just be easy for me at last. But when I think about it practically, I am glad it's a struggle. I am (as usual) attempting to write a book that's too hard for me. I'm telling a story I'm not smart enough to tell. The risk of failure is huge. But I prefer it this way. I'm forced to learn, forced to smarten myself up, forced to wrestle. And if it works, then I'll have written something that is better than I am.
I think it's a mistake to think, 'Am I going to write a young adult book, or do I desperately want to write a book for adults?' I think the better ambition is to try to write someone's favorite book, because those categorizations of adult, young adult, become kind of superfluous.
There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you've learned, the closer you are to your outcome... If you can handle rejection, you'll learn to get everything you want.
I think, for me, there's The Book I Should Write and The Book I Wanted to Write - and they weren't the same book. The Book I Should Write should be realistic, since I studied English Lit. It should be cultural. It should reflect where I am today. The Book I Wanted to Write would probably include flying women, magic, and all of that.
One of the things about the arts that is so important is that in the arts you discover the only way to learn how to do it is by doing it. You can't write by reading a book about it. The only way to learn how to write a book is to sit down and try to write a book
Related Authors
Brian Tracy Quotes
American
Author
Cassandra Clare Quotes
American
Author
Frederick Lenz Quotes
American
Author
Henry David Thoreau Quotes
American
Author
J. K. Rowling Quotes
English
Author
Jodi Picoult Quotes
American
Author
John Green Quotes
American
Author
Joyce Meyer Quotes
American
Author
Marianne Williamson Quotes
American
Author
Neil Gaiman Quotes
British
Author
Richelle Mead Quotes
American
Author
Rick Riordan Quotes
American
Author
Robert Kiyosaki Quotes
American
Author
Stephen King Quotes
American
Author
Terry Pratchett Quotes
English
Author
Virginia Woolf Quotes
British
Author