A friend was recently bemoaning her fate as a writer. She received a rejection and was positive this meant she should line the bird cage with her manuscript, turn the computer over to her kids, and learn to grow exotic flowers instead of beating her head against the brick wall of publishing for even another second.
Fear not, sayeth I. For behold, I bring you Ursula K. Lequin's rejection letter:
Ursula K. Le Guin writes extremely well, but I'm sorry to have to say that on the basis of that one highly distinguishing quality alone I cannot make you an offer for the novel. The book is so endlessly complicated by details of reference and information, the interim legends become so much of a nuisance despite their relevance, that the very action of the story seems to be to become hopelessly bogged down and the book, eventually, unreadable. The whole is so dry and airless, so lacking in pace, that whatever drama and excitement the novel might have had is entirely dissipated by what does seem, a great deal of the time, to be extraneous material. My thanks nonetheless for having thought of us. The manuscript of The Left Hand of Darkness is returned herewith.
Ursula survived. So can you. 🙂 Write on, fellow scribblers, write on! (And remind me, when I start to wallow, that I posted this.)