Socquet discovers he was in fact an altar boy, and considers why that experience might have slipped his mind.

The top three reasons anthology editor Rachel Kramer Bussel won’t be giving you a free critique of your rejected story.

Kimberly M. Wetherell rides the rough road of rejection and weighs her options for the future. Either way, there will be booze.

Melissa Febos knows rejection. In tribute to all the editors who knew she could do better, she culls the choice highlights from the contents of her self-addressed envelopes.

Will Entrekin thought rejection was bad. Then his mother got sick.

Real writers eat rejection sunny side up for breakfast. They take those little slips and make a tasty sandwich for lunch. And what goes better with baked rejection casserole than a side of creamed rejection? One of these days, Sung J. Woo thinks he might get used to the R word.

Susan Henderson started LitPark in 2006 with the goal of building a supportive community for writers. She asked monthly questions intended to bond and inspire writers with storytelling. She interviewed writers from the unknown to the debut to Neil Gaiman and Lemony Snicket. But what she didn’t realize she was doing was chronicling the ups and downs of writing and submitting her novel, THE RUBY CUP, which will be published by Harper Collins in September 2010. Follow the peaks and valleys of that process—the writer’s block, the false hope, the face-on-the-floor depression, and the hard work of creating a novel. She hopes this is helpful, especially to those of you in the face-on-the-floor stage. You may be closer than you think!

So here is The Evolution of the Book with a story of close calls that end, time and again, in rejection, and the debilitating effect it has on a writer.

Here’s the good news. My first novel was reviewed by the New York Times. Here’s the bad news. It was a horrible review. I do not hyperbolize. It was really bad. So that you understand how terrible it is, I’ve included it entirely as the next full paragraph. Please feel free to gasp, snicker, or [...]

Aaron Dietz describes the agonizing process of rejecting submissions, and why SPAM Publishing has decided not to do it.