Optimist gets world's worst rejection letter

(702 words)

In my evergreen attempts to gauge my occupational results (pathetic) versus my potential (monumental), I think I’ve settled on what kind of following I have. It is thus:

I have a cult following.

That sounds presumptuous until you consider the kind of cult writing like mine inspires.

My cult is polite, proper, has good posture and excels at things like living room “Jeopardy.”

This is opposed to the kind of cults that indulge in drugs, random sex and stand on street corners and harass strangers as to why they should sell their possessions and follow me in ways that have nothing to do with my lame Twitter account (seeking followers @8days2Amish!).

But I’m always tickled when someone tells me how much they enjoy my blog or my books — and some of them are sober folk, too!

One of my favorite’s is my buddy Greg who’s told me, “You’re the reason I’m glad I have insomnia.” It’s true. He says when he can’t sleep, he goes back and reads in reverse order nearly all my 2,000 blog posts from the past 10 years.

He says he laughs out loud, which inevitably awakens his wife, who I must assume either hates my guts or at least wishes my blogs were full of things like golf or pottery tips or other LOL-free topics.

But he’s not alone. I’m always hearing the kind of feedback that buoys me into believing one day all this deliberate typing will pay off.

I keep thinking I’m on the verge of some breakthrough where literary agents and publishers see me through new eyes. A prestigious agent who was once indifferent to my book proposals replied to my latest idea to say just that.

I now make him sick.

The book proposal is “The Art of Living Suddenly: How to Deal with a Parkinson’s Diagnosis (& other things that suck).” It’s about how anytime we hear of anyone dying suddenly we need to commit to living suddenly.

Here’s what he wrote:

“Thank you so much for writing. Your book hits me too close to the bone: both of my parents had Parkinsonism-induced Alzheimer’s disease, and I watched them die from it. I’ll likely get it, too. More specifically, Robin Williams was diagnosed with Lewy Body dementia, a particularly nasty variety of Alzheimer’s that I’ve also seen up close and personal. I’m afraid it’s a pass from me. I do not think you should pursue a project that has the potential to upset readers the way this upsets me.

Frank

I swear I went back and read it twice to be certain I didn’t miss the part where reading my proposal made his penis detach.

Really, I think a guy like Frank would benefit from reading a book about sudden living. He seems haunted by a future that may or may not ever come to pass. Who knows? They may find a cure for what killed his parents or he may enjoy a symptom-free life.

Or he may get hit by a bus today on his way to the Friday bowling meet.

I mean, you always have to look at the bright side.

I without fail do. I mean, I was floored by the scalding desolation of what I consider to be among the worst rejection letters ever sent — and, by God, I’m something of an expert.

But I got up and am back up and at ‘em today, forever convinced I’m right and anyone who rejects me is wrong, wrong, wrong.

In that way, I’ve always considered myself the Lucas Jackson of rejection-riddled writers. Luke is the Paul Newman character in the peerless “Cool Hand Luke.”

“Dragline” (George Kennedy) beats Luke so thoroughly he becomes exasperated at Luke’s stubborn insistence on rising to rejoin a battle he cannot possibly win.

“Stay down, man,” Dragline pleads. “You’re beat.”

“You’re gonna have to kill me …”

In the end — spoiler alert! — they do just that.

I’ve for years tried to divine some profound lesson from Luke’s struggles and all I can figure is it’s "don’t buck the system or the system will kill you."

So I’ve perhaps learned the lesson.

I’ve just never applied it.

And I never will.

Related …

Reject me, please

Too self-deprecatory? Me? Here’s why …

My novel frustrations

Praise for “Last Baby Boomer”

Someone stole my book!

My novel's done! Again!

Done! Last night I finished my 17th novel and I’m basking in the sublime sense of accomplishment. I couldn’t be more confident that it is going to be an international bestseller and that Spielberg will soon be calling with offers.

I think I’m more proud of this than any of the others.

My 17th novel is called “The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool.” It’s exact same name as my 16 previous novels.

In fact, it’s basically the same as the previous 16 novels.

Sure, all the versions are a bit different, but the thrust is the same.

I figure the last baby boomer is going to die in the year 2081 when he or she will be 118 years old. My 17 novels have been the story of that hypothetical man.

I figure people are going to be so sick of baby boomers by then that they’re going to take the last one and lodge him in a museum suite. People will spend $25 to be with him for 15 minutes. If they’re in the room when he dies, they win the jackpot.

The problem is he won’t die.

I call it a coming of old, old age story. Because everyone has to die, but only one of us gets to die last.

Not a bad premise, eh?

People seem to like it. I’ll never forget the reaction of the first big shot agent I sent it to. He actually called me and gushed that the book sounded like great fun. He asked me to send the entire manuscript.

I clearly remember setting down the phone and thinking, “Should the Cadillac be red or black?”


He never called back and never returned any of my calls. I like to think maybe the novel was so good the excitement from reading it made him drop dead.

That was about 10 years and maybe 1,000 rejections ago.

You sound like a real failure when you tell people you wrote a novel 10 years ago and it still hasn’t been published. But I haven’t been sitting at the computer hammering away at the novel for that entire duration.

I’ve written four other golf and humor books, hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, did my part to help conceive two darling children, played a lot of golf, drank a lot of beer and probably smoked 100 soul-soothing cigars.

Fatigued from rejection, I’d set the novel aside for entire years. I’ve had two actual publishers -- so small they were what they euphemistically call "boutique" -- say they wanted to publish it. One broke my heart by later changing his mind. I reluctantly pulled it from the other after an intervening agent said she was confident she could find a bigger publisher.

She was mistaken.

The most frequent comment I hear about it from interested agents is that, gee, it’s really fun, the writing’s great, compelling story, someone’s going to just love it, but it doesn’t fit any genre so we don’t know how we’d sell it.

I tell them I sold 62 copies of my 2003 golf book during a raucous day-long book signing at my favorite tavern. And this is a true story: it’s the only day in the 12 years I’ve been a regular there that the owner had to throw someone out for being too rowdy.

I’m surprised industry people don’t offer more suggestions on how to improve it. Really, I’m all ears. They must think I’m one of those writers who believes each word is too precious to disturb.

That’s crazy. I don’t know any writers who wouldn’t be grateful for professional advice on how to make their books better. I parse every rejection to glean any shred of advice or criticism. Then after a groundswell of deliberate thought, I get the hammer out and start bashing the daylights out of what I once cherished.

My 17th novel is vastly different from my first one. I think each of my novels has gotten better and better.

And now I have a friendly association with a prestigious agent that just rejected my non-fiction frolic about trying to get a new word in the dictionary (“Zeitgust!”). She and her boss just loved it. I was very flattered. Alas, it was a no, she said, making me wonder again if I’m on pace to become the nation’s most rejected writer.

But she asked to see any other projects I’m pitching. I told her about my novel and sent her the first 25 pages. She liked it and is eager to see the rest.

It gave me the impetus to do a complete re-write based on something a top agent shared about why he passed. I think the book I finished yesterday is great and is going to be the one that puts me over the top.

I hope with all my heart that is so. Because, like all of us who write, we dearly want to prove we belong. We want our work to have mass appeal. We want to see people reading our books on planes and at the beach. We want our books turned into movies.

Really, more than the money and the professional security, I want to have an answer for people at parties when they ask what I do for a living.

I want to tell them I get paid to write books.

And what if this oh-so-promising agent comes back with yet another stinging rejection? What if she says, gee, this is great, someone’s going to love it, but it’s just not for me?

Then I’ll have no choice.

I’ll roll up my sleeves and start writing my 18th novel, ever confident that it’s going to be another blockbuster.

Jump the Query Shark!

I disagreed whenever my late father used to tell me I had a real talent for writing. It’s a character defect, I’d argue.

A talent is something that leads to lucrative fulfillment and widespread affirmation. A character defect is something that impedes those things.

Those with real talent enjoy robust professional obligations. Those with character defects squander hour after hour in lonely self-indulgent pursuits with no perceptible results.

Kind of like those of us who regularly blog.

I used to consider this blog the journalistic equivalent of a lemonade stand. Then one day it dawned on me that even stupid kids don’t give the lemonade away for free.

I always tell my students that I know I’m not working hard enough unless I receive at least a rejection letter a day. If that’s the proper measure, then I’ve been working my tail off since 1992 and have been on a real roll since September.

It has me once again wondering if it isn’t time to do something less yoked by near-constant rejection and more likely to lead to actual income. Something like, you know, sell lemonade by the glass.

This occurred to me over the weekend when my pitch letter for my rejection-magnet of a novel was critiqued on the “Query Shark” blogspot. It’s agent Janet Reid’s popular and useful writer’s website that gives professional feedback to wannabe authors like me who’re seeking agents or publishers.

To me it’s like sending your heartfelt best stuff to Simon Cowell on “American Idol.” The feedback can be brutal.

“I don’t know what the hell’s going on here . . . You’ve lost me . . . This is a confusing mess,” are some examples.

Now, I understand that may seem like pretty tame stuff to those of you who work in factories, the military or for all I know cupcake bakeries. Remember, I’ve only had three real jobs my entire life and one of them was at Pizza Hut.

But I know writers are notoriously thin-skinned and have enormous dirigible-sized egos when it comes to our work.

Take me, for example. Every single time I turn in an essay, assignment or book proposal, I become exactly like like Ralphie in the scene from “A Christmas Story” where he turns in his theme. I imagine the editor dancing across the room euphorically singing, “A-plus! Plus! Plus! Plus! Plus!”

It’s never happened and it didn’t happen with Query Shark. Here’s a key paragraph from my query:

“The Last Baby Boomer” is my 209-page novel about the life and death of the last baby boomer, Martin J. McCrae. Because his impending death will symbolically tombstone a generation known for selfish excess, the 117-year-old McCrae agrees to be part of a lottery ghoul pool. Contestants pay $25 to be in a museum suite with him for 15 minutes. If they are present when he expires, they win the multimillion dollar jackpot. One problem: McCrae won't die.”

Gripping stuff, huh? Here’s what she thought:

"Word count, not page numbers. Always . . . Tombstone is not a verb. Not now, not in the future, not ever . . . If the novel is simply waiting for him to die, you'll need something else to hold our interest.”

To which, I find myself stammering in retort, “But . . . but . . . C’mon, just give it a chance! It’s wonderful! It’s funny! It’s poignant! I work for six packs!”

I was most stung by her grave comment that tombstone cannot be used as a verb. For you non-writers out there, “symbolically tombstone” is one of those phrases writers coin with such self-satisfied glee that we immediately begin twirling around the room in our purple smoking jackets whist taking deep soulful snorts from our Tiffany brandy snifters.

Because that’s just what writer’s do

But on this day, there would be no retort. The Query Shark moves on. I’m invited to rewrite the query and to resubmit for consideration. Some of the reader comments were wonderfully kind and supportive and a few even appreciated my controversial use of tombstone as a verb.

I’m deeply grateful to them. May hot cigarette ash never singe their purple smoking jackets!

I’m in one of those professional troughs where I feel like giving up. There’s little hope and even less work. I used to pray that I’d be successful. Now, I have to fight off the urge to pray that God will just slay all my ambitions.

I cannot give in to those defeatist impulses. It’s too late for me to do something sensible like enroll in plumbing school. I will presevever. I will rewrite my query and hope anew that the valuable insights I’ve gained will lead to publishing success.

Besides, any writer would be foolish to let one perhaps offhand remark tombstone an entire career.