I received my 2,128th rejection letter yesterday.

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My-Immortal

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What answer should we give you? If you're as calloused as you claim (which may be the case), nothing we say, positive or negative will (or should?) have any effect on you. Right?

Rejection (of any kind) sucks.
 

Lantern Jack

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You don't have to answer at all. It's 2:00 in the morning and I'm just tossing stuff out to get it the heck out of my brain.

By the by, what is your job? To follow me around and shake your finger at me and make me feel like even more of a loser than I all ready do, if that's possible? Because that's pretty much the only thing you ever seem to say to me. Well, thanks for the tough love-hard advice approach, or whatever it is you think you're doing, but I have about one hundred very real, bi-polar-conjured voices in my head to tell me I'm worthless.

I don't need any additions from the peanut gallery.
 

My-Immortal

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Lantern Jack said:
You don't have to answer at all. It's 2:00 in the morning and I'm just tossing stuff out to get it the heck out of my brain.

By the by, what is your job? To follow me around and shake your finger at me and make me feel like even more of a loser than I all ready do, if that's possible? Because that's pretty much the only thing you ever seem to say to me. Well, thanks for the tough love-hard advice approach, or whatever it is you think you're doing, but I have about one hundred very real, bi-polar-conjured voices in my head to tell me I'm worthless.

I don't need any additions from the peanut gallery.

You asked a question - which is why I offered an answer.

I wasn't shaking my finger at you at all. I was taking what you said at face value and wondering what COULD make you feel better IF you were as calloused as you said. You must have read my post with the wrong tone completely. I never said you were a loser - I said rejection sucks. All I got in 2005 was rejections too. They suck. I never said you were worthless either so please stop reading in extra material in my posts.

If you "don't need any additions from the peanut gallery" then don't come onto a board and ASK questions. People might actually take the time to answer you.

Take care

Edit: If you're going to erase your initial post... <shrugs> .....others know what I was responding to. Oh wells.
 
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Lantern Jack

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Do you ever wonder why I always react the exact same way to your posts, and Optimus', and William Haskin's?

Not everyone else, but to you guys?

Do you think there might be a little something that you three keep doing to set me off?

And knowing that you keep setting me off, why do you persist?

Do you know what bear baiting is?

No? Look it up. Then stop a little moment and think about it.
 

Lantern Jack

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Bear baiting: A barbaric, medieval form of entertainment, whereupon a bear has his teeth smashed out with a hammer, his claws rent from his paws with pliers, then is chained in a pit and set upon by a pack of slavering dogs, while a mob stands around overhead and spits on the poor creature and laughs and makes wagers.
 

My-Immortal

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Lantern Jack said:
Bear baiting: A barbaric, medieval form of entertainment, whereupon a bear has his teeth smashed out with a hammer, his claws rent from his paws with pliers, then is chained in a pit and set upon by a pack of slavering dogs, while a mob stands around overhead and spits on the poor creature and laughs and makes wagers.

And by me answering your initial question I somehow baited you? You are definitely reading WAY too much into what I was posting. I'm flattered in a way that you want to compare me to those other posters (they do have some dry wit), but I was in no way trying to bait you. Perhaps you should try to calmly reread what I posted and realize I was in no way "slamming" you...okay?
 

Nicholas S.H.J.M Woodhouse

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i don't know if you have Arthur the cat in the US, but over here he was a cat used to advertise a brand of cat food and they took his teeth out to help him learn how to eat with his paw, which was the gimmick of their product.
 

Lantern Jack

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Nique Zoolio said:
i don't know if you have Arthur the cat in the US, but over here he was a cat used to advertise a brand of cat food and they took his teeth out to help him learn how to eat with his paw, which was the gimmick of their product.

I like you. You're very good at diverting wrath. Let's be friends (or feel my wrath). Just kidding (Or am I?) Not. (Am) Not (Am). Not (Am). Not (Am). Not (Am)...

It's not unlike watching a very stupid dog chasing it's own non-existent tail.
 

Lantern Jack

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My-Immortal said:
And by me answering your initial question I somehow baited you? You are definitely reading WAY too much into what I was posting. I'm flattered in a way that you want to compare me to those other posters (they do have some dry wit), but I was in no way trying to bait you. Perhaps you should try to calmly reread what I posted and realize I was in no way "slamming" you...okay?

Termites are devouring my brain (at least, that's what it feels like at the moment). They've been at it for two and a half weeks straight.

I won't be able to get medication for another two months.

You be calm.
 

Master Bedroom

Would really love to see the first post, not fair deleting it.

Hey, we have to give you an A for effort, I would have given up long before you.

Man, I have had only 4 Rejections and I felt like giving up, What keeps you going?

I still need to work on my stuff, give us all a look and see what we can do to help.

I have already been given some great advice, here on improving the first chapter of my Novella. That’s the beauty of word processors, writing can be fixed, bettered improved.


I know of a good way to sell your book, put a picture of a naked woman on the front cover, and picture of naked women, say, every ten pages. It might not have anything to do with the story but It will sell like hot cakes, maybe even hit the best seller list. If all else fails, I might even have to try that.


Edit: Added that last piece of wonderfull advice.
 
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Jamesaritchie

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Lantern Jack said:

Look at the bright side. You're now a bit past halfway to William Saroyan's record, and he turned out pretty well.
 

My-Immortal

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Master Bedroom said:
Would really love to see the first post, not fair deleting it.

He basically stated he got another rejection letter and that after 10-11 years and over 2100 rejections he'd found he was so calloused by it all that he really didn't feel anything about getting the most recent one...and then he asked, is this good?

I answered in my first post:

"What answer should we give you? If you're as calloused as you claim (which may be the case), nothing we say, positive or negative will (or should?) have any effect on you. Right?

Rejection (of any kind) sucks
."

My point was - if indeed he was so calloused already that a rejection letter had no effect on him, how could any answer any of us offer "Yes" or "No" be of any real help to him?

If we said, yes, it is good that you're calloused it basically means we think he's an unfeeling person that doesn't care that his art is being rejected everywhere...

If we said, no, it is NOT good that you're calloused it basically means we think he's become an unfeeling person and that is wrong - and that every new rejection letter should hurt just as much as the first....

I didn't see how either answer would have truly helped him, which is why I asked HIM which one we should offer?

And then, as you can see above - I got my head bitten off for trying to help.

Thanks...

Take care all -
 

Lantern Jack

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triceretops said:
Lantern, how long did it take you to accumulate this mass? It is surely a stupendous amount of "nos." Are these short stories, articles, and novels?
Just curious. And what kind of rejections are they? Form, written..etc.

Tri

The full stats:

$4,500 on postage, print outs and stamps.

Time invested: 11 years.

Types of things written: Any possible type of writing you could possibly conceive: 12 novels, 7 screenplays, 150 essays, 500 poems, 300 short stories, 450 newspaper articles, and the rest is miscellaneous or agent stuff or re-runs.

2,128 places hit up.

Number of publications: The big, fat goose egg.

And yet, people keep telling me I have talent, possibly, after a fashion, maybe, so I soldier on.
 

Sassenach

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If you've written 450 newspaper articles and haven't sold a single one, then, with all due respect, you need to study the form.
 

Lantern Jack

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Sassenach said:
If you've written 450 newspaper articles and haven't sold a single one, then, with all due respect, you need to study the form.

No, I don't. I'm a highly-experienced journalist and I'll send you clips if you want to see any. Unfortunately, the New York Times has impossible standards.

Aw, what the heck. Below is the last feature I wrote for the Buffalo State College Record:

A boy and his whistling machine

BY Joshua Le Suer

Let us take a mental tour of the fresh installation at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center: "Beyond/In Western New York 2005."

First stop: Gallery One.

Meg Knowles's Wet Spot": While craw-, shark- and goldfish dreamfully paddle about, a projected hand swishes about in the background at hyperspeed.

Joe Miller's "Offering": An oil-on-paint of two Wonderland Alices clutching hands and staring up at what Burchfield-Penney preparator Tom Holt calls, "this greenish, sort-of-sci-fi, uncomfortable, very-eerie-looking sky."

Alfonso Volo's "The Worm Stitch Extension" and "The Plush Mouse's Furry Jockstrap Rhizome": Crocheted yarn is suspended from the ceiling and adorned with holographic glitter, as well as corsage pins and needles.

But just as you turn to venture further into Gallery Two, you hear it: "Tweedle-tweet-wuh-woo-vee-vee-twiddle-twit."

You turn and see nothing but a pair of black speakers on top of a white cabinet.

Again, you hear the strange whistling sound, a sound so very human, without a hint of synthesization. Tentatively, you whistle back. The speakers match you, trill for trill. You whistle the first few bars of "Three Blind Mice." The speakers mimic you perfectly, then suddenly dogleg into Beethoven's "5th" with German undertones.

You've just made the acquaintance of Marc Bohlen's remarkable "Two Whistling Machines," a work of technological art consisting of computers, polyethylene, electronics and silk, according to the placard.

Holt has become somewhat attached to Bohlen's whistling machines.

"I actually feel bad turning it off at the end of the day," Holt said. "I walk by it throughout the day and have these five-minute, whistled conversations. But, essentially, I have to kill it every day and turn it back on the next day."

Not only are the whistling machines fluent and fluid conversationalists, capable of concocting their own lilting variations, they're also very well-traveled.

"The fact is, this piece is shown as far as Spain and Croatia, and sometimes when it whistles back at you here in America, it might whistle back at you a whistle it heard in Spain," Holt said. "It speaks internationally."

While Holt enjoys the company of the whistling machines, he said the honey-speakered contraptions irk some of his colleagues.

"A lot of people here don't like it because it annoys the hell out of them because it whistles all day," Holt said. "But if you like what it has to say, as I do, well then, it's a pleasure to talk to."

Holt said that not only do the machines often hold high-pitched conversations with art connoisseurs, but they also converse with each other. But only when nobody else is around, because they don't want anyone else to hear what they're saying.

Even though the machines may be a bit shy, they're also compassionate to the inferior whistler.

"It has a perfectly breathy whistle, and [Bohen] specifically designed it to have a breathy whistle, so as to not intimidate poor whistlers," Holt said.

While these little tweedlers are a marvelment, many of the other pieces offer an equally intricate experience.

"Offering" tells of the distinct horror of living in a world where anything might descend from the sky at any time," Holt said. "The fear you see on their faces is the same fear we all experience from things that come out of the sky, such as suicide bombers, U.F.O. sightings...the ozone...These characters are just like us."

Betsy Manning, assistant to the director of Burchfield-Penney, found her attention drawn to a panel depicting a young child brandishing a pistol, as though it were a Tonka truck.

"The child with the gun makes you think because many children kill each other with guns, " Manning said. "It's a beautiful piece, but it really brings to mind today's society."

Rebekah Sipos, a junior art history student, appreciated the diversity of the show. But, when asked which piece stood out for her, chose Wet Spot."

"[It's] not just something hanging on the wall...," Sipos said.

While many of these pieces raise questions about all sorts of social issues, more than any other, it's Bohlen's "Whistling Machines" which beg the question, Is this art?

"I could easily argue that it's art because it communicates and it explores and it has a sense of design, which is created by the artist," Holt said. "So, if you think about it, it fulfills all the criteria of what makes a work of art."
 

Sheryl Nantus

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Lantern Jack said:
No, I don't. I'm a highly-experienced journalist and I'll send you clips if you want to see any. Unfortunately, the New York Times has impossible standards.

hate to be a realist, but maybe you might be better off starting with your sights a bit lower than the New York Times. Even a "highly-experienced journalist" may have to settle for being published elsewhere to start with.

and perhaps not shotgun your writing efforts across the map - choose one genre and take more courses, do more work in a single area than just pumping out all sorts of work across the spectrum.
 

reph

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Lantern, you mention clips. If some of your pieces have been published, those don't count in the tally of rejections. I understood from previous posts that you were published as a news and sports reporter.

By the way, in the one you posted, that isn't what "beg the question" means.
 

Lantern Jack

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reph said:
Lantern, you mention clips. If some of your pieces have been published, those don't count in the tally of rejections. I understood from previous posts that you were published as a news and sports reporter.

By the way, in the one you posted, that isn't what "beg the question" means.

No, there's a difference, in my opinion, at least, between what you get published on an internship or for the school paper, and what you get published in connection with your larger writing career. And as for the other thing, about setting my sights a bit lower, I'm totally concentrating on lit reviews now, which are the most color-blind venue to break into.
 

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Sassenach said:
If you've written 450 newspaper articles and haven't sold a single one, then, with all due respect, you need to study the form.

If the only thing you've been "published" in is a college newspaper, then I have to agree with Sassenach. One of my degrees is in journalism, too, and I've not only had articles published in our local paper, but I've done PR work for a local non-profit based on my writing and written for an online satire site (I decided that journalism isn't what I want to do, which is why I don't do it anymore unless asked).

It's not hard at all to get articles published in local newspapers, but your writing has to be noticeably better than the lower standards of a college rag. Once you get experience at the professional level (a real, local paper and not a college paper), and your work is of the highest journalistic standards, THEN you can try the NYT. Just because they have "high" standards, doesn't mean they're impossible. It just means that your writing doesn't meet their high standards. Don't blame it on them. There are obviously plenty of people throughout the years who've been able to get their writing up to snuff.

I'm not trying to be insulting, just honest. From reading the clip you posted a few posts ago, if that is representative of your journalistic writing style, I can see why you've yet to have an article printed in a legitimate paper.

It's not written journalistically at all, even if it is a Feature (which is what I'm guessing it was, since it matches that format more than a news clip).

College papers print more from newbs and let more slide because the students are learning and don't really know how to write a proper article yet. The writing style you used to construct that article printed in that college paper most likely wouldn't fly in a real newspaper.

So, were I you, I'd follow Sass's advice and study the format more. I'm sure you'll take that as some grand insult and start venting diatriabes and vitriol at me for pointing that out, but from a journalistic standpoint, it's the truth.
 
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