I get a lot of people asking me how I learned creative writing. My comment is always the same, “I dropped out of school and played touch-football on campus.” This made me dumber.
Because I was still searching for a skill set. In other words, let me add this quote: “Creative writing is pretty much just making s**t up,” as playwright David Mamet put it. I was good at that.
But one has to be determined and obsessive to reach a pinnacle of “making s**t up.” It’s not for dilettantes. Writing is misery and suffering and loss of any normal life, because to most writers nothing is ever good enough. And rejection slips seem to be proof you’re not “making s**t up” correctly. If writing were a great Italian dinner, the rejection slip would be agita (heartburn) afterward.
Most rejections from traditional publishers, both for plays and novels, are generally blunt, boilerplate and boneheaded, but they are still a “No, thanks.” Here’s a sample of what some of my old rejection slips sounded like, just promise not to show them to the Pulitzer officials.
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