Turning life's crap into compost

The daily Book News update that I receive today featured an article about one Bill Shapiro (editor of Other People's Love Letters) who is asking for authors to send in rejection letters for a new book that he is working on, entitled Other People's Rejection Letters. Letters can be typed or handwritten on paper, by text email or in any format the recipient chooses, and can be either emailed to Bill direct as an attachment or scanned in.

This is an interesting idea that I can see might have a considerable market. Rejection is a necessary evil that every writer has to deal with, and I have had more than my fair share over the years. Perhaps I will send Bill some of mine. The ones I found the most offensive were those addressed to Jane rather than June, showing that the writer had obviously not bothered to read my work. I can imagine how they would have felt if I had spelt their name wrong, but for some reason it was deemed acceptable for them to do this to me.

The post predictably featured several comments from would-be authors, on either side of the pond. One of these contained a link to the website of one Mary Patrick Kavanagh who has found a novel (no pun) way to celebrate the imminent (self) publication of her book. She will be holding a live funeral for it, on December 6th, which can be watched via webcast, hosted by Lifemark Chapel of the Chimes. This will include a viewing of the 'failed' manuscript, rejection letters etc, together with the authors much watched DVD copy of The Secret (I can relate to this one). Viewers are encouraged to bring remnants of their own dead dreams to be buried alongside the authors own dashed hopes. Mary goes on to say that copies of the rejected novel will be sold in the lobby to offset the cost of the appetizers served afterwards. Pity purchases are welcome and encouraged.

I don't why I didn't think of this when I self published my book 2 1/2 years ago - but then again I am not American - and things like this can only happen there. I applaud her sense of humour and enterprise and hope her book is a resounding success. Pity I am working that day, or I would have booked a front row seat !