Saturday is for the Arts

I am continuing to borrow shamelessly from Jane Yolen's book, Take Joy. One of the things that she notes is the importance of persistence. In the chapter on rejection notices from publishers, she encourages would be writers not to take the rejections personally. She goes on to point out that the experience of most writers includes many rejection notices. For example, she received 113 rejections before her first poem was published (I have a ways to go--I have had two rejection notices so far, but I have given up submitting them for a while.) Madeleine L'Engle's Newbery Medal-winning book, A Wrinkle in Time, was rejected 29 times before a publisher finally accepted it. Even Dr. Seuss's book, To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street was rejected more times that L'Engle's book.

The other point that she makes in this chapter rather as an aside is the fact that when it comes to research, nothing is lost. She writes, "For a writer, nothing is lost. Research once done can be used again and again, a kind of marvel of recycling. As writers we need to be shameless about thieving from ourselves...Good research swims upstream where it can spawn again."