A million years ago I had a fire in the belly. Eye of the tiger and shit like that. I thought I was going to be a successful writer and I was punching it, baby. I've just been talking to a friend who means more to me than she probably realises and somehow these documents from the past came up.
In case you can't be bothered clicking on the images and reading the details, I sent a story called Treading Water At Turtle Bay to Quadrant. Les Murray wrote back (looking through these rejection letters, I really have a lot of detailed, encouraging letters of rejection) saying he didn't want to go with the story. I sent the story back to him with a letter in which I actually tell him that I think he got it wrong... arrogant fucker I was.
Anyway, he did accept the next story I sent to him (Love Letter) and Southerly accepted Turtle Bay. But I just wanted to share my correspondence between my humble self and Australia's most celebrated poet.
5 comments:
He seemed to like you. Maybe you should write to him again. :)
Will send something to him tomorrow... later today. Something.
Thank you.
Thanks for sharing this. I think it's really encouraging that you get positive feedback, even if it comes in the form of a letter of rejection..?
I read somewhere that the successful writers are the ones who don't quit.
So don't give up.
Don't quit.
The successful writers are the talented ones who don't give up. Some of us just don't quite have The Stuff. And that's okay. We can't all be winners.
Can't ever quit writing though, GG. If it's part of you it's part of you.
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