fuck negativity about your own work! be PROUD!!!! it may not be the best work you’ve ever done, but you got words down! don’t let yourself be over critical!!! if you don’t like what you wrote, be proud of the effort you put in
Sylvia Plath: There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice.
Rudyard Kipling: I’m sorry Mr. Kipling, but you just don’t know how to use the English language.
Emily Dickinson: [Your poems] are quite as remarkable for defects as for beauties and are generally devoid of true poetical qualities.
Ernest Hemingway (on The Torrents of Spring): It would be extremely rotten taste, to say nothing of being horribly cruel, should we want to publish it.
Dr. Seuss: Too different from other juveniles on the market to warrant its selling.
The Diary of Anne Frank: The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.
Richard Bach (on Jonathan Livingston Seagull): will never make it as a paperback. (Over 7.25 million copies sold)
H.G. Wells (on The War of the Worlds): An endless nightmare. I do not believe it would “take”…I think the verdict would be ‘Oh don’t read that horrid book’. And (on The Time Machine): It is not interesting enough for the general reader and not thorough enough for the scientific reader.
Edgar Allan Poe: Readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works in which a single and connected story occupies the entire volume.
Herman Melville (on Moby Dick): We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market in [England]. It is very long, rather old-fashioned…
Jack London: [Your book is] forbidding and depressing.
William Faulkner: If the book had a plot and structure, we might suggest shortening and revisions, but it is so diffuse that I don’t think this would be of any use. My chief objection is that you don’t have any story to tell. And two years later: Good God, I can’t publish this!
Stephen King (on Carrie): We are not interested in science fiction which deals with negative utopias. They do not sell.
Joseph Heller (on Catch–22): I haven’t really the foggiest idea about what the man is trying to say… Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level … From your long publishing experience you will know that it is less disastrous to turn down a work of genius than to turn down talented mediocrities.
George Orwell (on Animal Farm): It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA.
Oscar Wilde (on Lady Windermere’s Fan): My dear sir, I have read your manuscript. Oh, my dear sir.
Vladimir Nabokov (on Lolita): … overwhelmingly nauseating, even to an enlightened Freudian … the whole thing is an unsure cross between hideous reality and improbable fantasy. It often becomes a wild neurotic daydream … I recommend that it be buried under a stone for a thousand years.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit was turned down so many times, Beatrix Potter initially self-published it.
Lust for Life by Irving Stone was rejected 16 times, but found a publisher and went on to sell about 25 million copies.
John Grisham’s first novel was rejected 25 times.
Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen (Chicken Soup for the Soul) received 134 rejections.
Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) received 121 rejections.
Gertrude Stein spent 22 years submitting before getting a single poem accepted.
Judy Blume, beloved by children everywhere, received rejections for two straight years.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle received 26 rejections.
Frank Herbert’s Dune was rejected 20 times.
Carrie by Stephen King received 30 rejections.
The Diary of Anne Frank received 16 rejections.
Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rolling was rejected 12 times.
Dr. Seuss received 27 rejection letters
no thoughts, just "where is duty, where is sacrifice" and the way that alicent clings to abstract constructs like religion, honor, duty and sacrifice because her material life is so concretely terrible and empty. to have loved someone so dearly, and watch them be what you perceive as free while your entire personhood is reduced to a womb and made to serve the realm, a vessel for the rotting king to use and abuse. to not exist as a person for yourself but in only in service to others as you are ordered by your father under a patriarchal structure..........and then the contrast of that quote, which summarizes all of alicent's anguish and agony, to the classic, "what is honor compared to a woman's love? what is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms...we are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love.".................but alicent doesn't have love, not anymore. duty, honor, these concepts - they're all she's got, and the lack of the very elements that make them meaningful has corroded her inside and out. so: honor, duty, sacrifice, all without love. and here we are.
it makes me laugh when I go on twitter or tiktok and see people complaining that alicent and rhaenyra were the only two posters to be released first because it’s just like….people still don’t want to acknowledge that this is THEIR story at the end of the day. everything in this plot revolves around these two women and their relationship with each other. everyone is simply a side player to their show
what people think is hard about writing: describing the joy, love, beauty, grief, loss and hope that form the richness of human experience
what is actually hard about writing: describing basic actions such as turning, leaning over, reclining, gesturing, saying something in a quiet voice, breathing, getting up from chairs, and walking across rooms
cast fat people in normal roles that do not revolve around being fat/ridiculed, I dare you
I WILL wake up Christmas morning and find these two scissoring under the tree 🙏🏻🙏🏻 please god
i only follow a few writeblrs so i decided to make one of these posts. please reblog if you are a writeblr and you write/post:
fantasy
historical fiction
contemporary fiction
horror
writing references
moodboards
edits
and just a reminder, i follow from @opcnarms so if you see it that’s me!💗
“In the script, there's nothing specific as far as them saying ‘I miss you.’ so it's a wonderful challenge cinematically and in performance to bring them together without words.”
— Geeta V. Patel, House of the Dragon: Inside the Creation of a Targaryen Dynasty