Skip to footer

J.K. Rowling offers rejection letters as lesson in perseverence

When fans struggling with literary rejection reached out to J.K. Rowling on Twitter, the best-selling author responded with words of inspiration and examples of some of her own rejection letters.

|
Evan Agostini/ Invision/ AP­/ File
'Harry Potter' author J.K. Rowling lights the Empire State Building to mark the launch of her non-profit children's organization Lumos, in New York, in April 2015.

"Harry Potter" author and British multimillionaire J.K. Rowling has once again offered the world living proof that success depends more on determination than luck.

In response to a request from fans struggling with literary rejection, the author on Friday posted two rejection letters on Twitter for her recent detective series Cormoran Strike, written under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.

Ms. Rowling’s "Harry Potter" series had sold over 450 million copies worldwide. Her first stab at fiction for adults, the "Casual Vacancy," met mixed reviews from critics but was also highly anticipated.

The reveal all started when recently rejected author Dianne Brubaker mentioned Rowling in a tweet, citing the author’s success after rejection as reason to remain hopeful.

Ms. Brubaker was then gifted with the greatest hope of all, a Rowling response in the form of commiseration. Rowling tweeted back at Brubaker, telling Brubaker that she used her own first rejection letter as inspiration to keep writing.

Another Twitter user joined in, asking to see Rowling’s first Potter rejection. Rowling demurred, saying that her Harry Potter letters were in a box in the attic. Instead, she brought out two rejection letters for her recent series, Cormoran Strike.

Rowling told her fans on Twitter that the letters she posted today were just a sampling of the rejection letters she received. She even received a particularly rude one from the editor who wrote the worst Potter rejection, years ago.

“I wasn’t going to give up until every publisher turned me down,” tweeted Rowling, “but I often feared that would happen.”

Rowling is famous for her rags to riches rise to fame. She describes her struggling years as “as poor as you can possibly go in the UK without being homeless,” and has told reporters that she was on welfare for several years.

She is also well known for dispensing advice to aspiring writers. Last August when two young people reached out to her on Twitter saying they had trouble being taken seriously as a writer, she urged them to keep writing, no matter what others say.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to J.K. Rowling offers rejection letters as lesson in perseverence
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2016/0325/J.K.-Rowling-offers-rejection-letters-as-lesson-in-perseverence
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe