1. My senior thesis proffessor. She accused me (subtly, but accused me none-the-less) of plagiarism. I had just written an especially well-worded sentence. I had no choice but to change the sentence. Oh, and she was obsessed with Nabokov. I had the same prof my junior year, and had to do a big project for her. It was a collection of short stories, and she compared every single one of them to Nabokov. To this day, I never miss an opportunity to call Nabokov a chain-smoking, egotistical, pedophile.
2. My (now defunct) blog caught the attention of a small press editor, and he asked for an essay for an anthology detailing the political and social movement opposing Bush. I spent a couple of weeks writing a memoir about how hard it is to be liberal in the reddest of red counties, getting it juuuust right. I zipped it off and got a few e-mails about how the project was progressing and it should be on the shelf by Summer or Fall of '06. In August I e-mailed the guy, asking how things were coming. He said he should come out soon. The next e-mail I sent, this time in October, asking if it would come out soon, has gone unanswered.
3. The very first short story I submitted was to Analog. I thought that none of my previous stuff was good enough, sat down, and whipped out the shittiest story ever written. No lie, when people ask me what's the worst story I've ever read, I reply "Blood Pills by M. Brandon Robbins." After the story was in the mail, I re-read and realized how bad it was. When I got the rejection letter, I wasn't upset; what upset was that I knew that I deserved it.