Getting Bogged Down By Rejections?
By Meredith Efken

If you’re a writer, you know that rejections letters are an inevitable part of the business. Most rejections are politely dull, formulary things—“While this story is well-written, we regret that it is not a good fit for our publishing needs, blah, blah, blah...” But every once in awhile, you get one that is so over-the-top rude that it becomes a rallying point. A war cry. And just plain hysterically funny.

I won’t reveal which house sent this in rejection of SAHM I Am, but I want to thank them for this quote that will live in infamy, if I have anything to do with it:

“ ...Most women buy books to escape, not to be mired in the morass of the mundane.”

Mired? Morass? Mundane?!? I’m miffed! Though I must admire the alliteration. It’s magnificent. But the message is moronic. And mistaken.

Far from being a discouragement, this statement served to remind me why I wrote SAHM I Am in the first place. I wanted to let the world know that being a stay-at-home mom does not equate being “mired in the morass of the mundane.” If you’re a SAHM (or a SAHD for that matter), I know it may seem at times as if your daily tasks are a bog of tedium. We all know that what we’re doing has incredible value, but it often doesn’t feel like it. And the rest of the business world tends to look at us with a mixture of admiration and pity. So this book wasn’t written for escape, but for empathy.

It was annoying to have my book so casually dismissed and misunderstood. But that’s the way publishing works sometimes. The great irony in all this is that about three weeks later, Randy Ingermanson sent me his terrific “funnier than Erma Bombeck” endorsement, and that same day, my editor at Steeple Hill contacted my agent to buy the book. She called it “fabulous.” Take that, Ms. Morass-of-the-Mundane!

So don’t let those rejections get you down. Keep the best ones as encouragement. And keep the worst ones so you have something to spur you on and thumb your nose at once you hear the words we all long to hear from an editor, “What a fabulous book!”