literary success
If at first you don’t succeed …
Oh wow! I’ve been reading about assorted famous and hugely successful authors whose work was rejected multiple times before someone saw their true potential… and feeling decidedly sub-standard!
JK Rowling, (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone)
Rejected by 12 publishers. Now one of the most successful series in history.
William Golding (Lord of the Flies)
Rejected by 20 publishers. Became a classic.
John Grisham (A Time to Kill)
Rejected by 28 publishers. He’s since written over forty books, selling a collective 275 million copies worldwide, translated into 42 languages.
Stephen King (Carrie)
His debut novel was rejected 30 times. He famously threw it in the fire but his wife rescued it! Published 65 books and known as the ‘King of Horror’!
Kathryn Stockett (The Help)
Rejected 60 times. The debut novel went on to spend over 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Agatha Christie (The Mysterious Affair at Styles)
Struggled for 5 years before being accepted for publication. She is the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul)
Rejected by over 140 publishers. 500 million copies sold world-wide since.
Rejection is an inescapable reality in a writer’s life, but it still hurts. I am clearly not made of sufficiently stern stuff: I gave up trying to find a literary agent to represent me after three rejections! Puny!!!
Literary snobbery
Real life has thrown a few curved balls this week so I needed something light and undemanding to help me unwind. 
The Journey by Josephine Cox was lurking at the back of one of my shelves, and it has lived up to expectation: light, untaxing, but sufficiently gripping to hold my interest.
In a nutshell, the story revolves around three strangers thrown together by chance. Ben Morris is intrigued by two women, Lucy Baker and her daughter Mary, who frequently appear at a graveside bearing the inscription:
BARNEY DAVIDSON
1890-1933
A MAN OF COURAGE.
HE MADE THE GREATEST SACRIFICE OF ALL.
What was this ‘greatest sacrifice’? Why was the older woman so wracked with grief two decades later? Who had ordered this inscription? And why?
Ben seizes the opportunity to introduce himself when Lucy slips and falls in the cemetery, and is delighted to be invited to their old Edwardian house. But Ben senses the imperious and forthright Lucy is harbouring a profound secret from her past. She is – but one which she has sworn to carry to her grave. However, her chauffeur and old friend, Adam, took no such oath. He knows the full story and he is sure Barney’s children should all know the truth about their father. Ben’s romantic interest in Mary encourages him to befriend them and together, he and Mary, discover a history of deep and sacrificial love. It’s a moving story even though it’s of its time.
It’s true that when you’re a writer yourself, reading is an altogether different experience. You can’t help but analyse – structure, style, tactics, grammar – and I must confess it irked me that Cox assumes the role of omniscient narrator. She changes point of view at random – sometimes paragraph by paragraph. She tells rather than shows. And the mature Lucy doesn’t quite square with the young version. Oh dear … ‘cardinal sins’ we’ve been warned against so often. Certainly not up to the standard of the master-storytellers I usually review in this blog.
BUT this author – who died three years ago aged 82 – wrote about 60 books, was published by one of the biggest British publishing houses, sold 20 million copies, and was one of the top three most-borrowed library authors. Huge success by anyone’s standard, huh? Add to that the fact that she was one of ten children, with an alcoholic father, who grew up in a mill-worker’s house in Lancashire, married at 16, and had two sons which meant she was unable to take up a university place at Cambridge, and you begin to get the measure of a quite remarkable and seriously determined woman. Who am I to judge her?! I confess, I felt thoroughly ashamed of my literary snobbery.