I’m going to start off by saying that rejection letters are not personal, nor are they likely to be a commentary on your writing ability as many agents/editors don’t get past the query or first chapter. Writing and publishing is a subjective business. It’s all about finding the person who is as passionate about your novel as you are.
Okay, disclaimer taken care of…rather than huff and get all depressed about my own mounting stack of rejection letters, I prefer to laugh it off. So here’s my list of 7 Uses for those Pesky Rejection Letters. It is meant in all good fun and no hard feelings. However, since most queries and rejections are conducted by email these days, you’ll just have to pretend that in your manic episode, you printed them all out so as to have hard copies with which to vent your frustrations upon.
Ahem.
1. Bedding for your pet rat or hamster (The poop actually looks better on it.)
2. Confetti at your sister’s wedding (as long as no one takes a close look at the print, you’ll be fine. And really, who looks that closely at specks of paper?)
3. Paper mache voodoo doll (of the agent who rejected you, or anyone else you fancy. How about the guy who invented your email server, which must have made some formatting error in sending your query?)
4. Origami! (Take all that negative energy and filter it into positive with Zen meditation.)
5. Kindling (or better yet, line the wick of your kid’s rocket science project with them and send those ignorant form rejections into the stratosphere.)
6. Spit wads (The perfect projectiles for those people who bug you, like drivers who cut you off. You can just pepper their cars with spit balls. It’s not really vandalism since the decoration isn’t permanent…)
7. Paper airplanes (but if you’re not careful, repeated failed take-offs could make you just as mad as you were when you started out.)
Any other ideas? Come on, make me laugh. 🙂
Angela Wallace, Author 