It's 7:05 pm, and I have yet to begin the latest Harry Potter book, because it hasn't arrived. Why, oh why, did I pre-order from Amazon instead of running to Wal-Mart or Best Buy or Borders?
On a positive note, I finished edits on my book and sent it to my agent. I also cleaned house, folded all the laundry, and read lots of interesting, non-HP things online.
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This has been making the rounds in the publishing industry in the last week. From the article:
Oh, look: Someone's submitted Jane Austen's books to a bunch of publishers, only to have them rejected! It proves the publishing industry is horribly screwed up! Which means you can feel better when your own book is rejected!
Yeah, well. Not really. The implication here is that the novels were rejected because the agents and publishers can't recognize quality when it's presented to them. What's more likely, however, is that most of the agents and publishers do recognize it, and they recognize it's from Jane Austen, not this yahoo. The article notes that of the 18 publishers and editors who this dude sent the novels to, one seemed not to recognize the source, one definitely did, and the rest "simply rejected them or never responded."
It's a stupid stunt and doesn't prove anything except that publishers send form rejections. Duh. There's a saying among writers: "A no is a no." Profound.
What it's really saying is this: the only thing a rejection letter truly means is they aren't publishing your work. That's it. It doesn't mean your work sucked. It doesn't mean they don't recognize genius. It just means they aren't publishing that story at that time. Don't overthink it.
And if you think editors and agents can't recognize famous writing, you're fooling yourself. I daresay most of them love books even more than writers, and many of them have degrees in English and literature.
If you can't get published, quit blaming everyone else and keep trying to improve your writing until you can. And knock it off with the silly games. You're just wasting everyone's time.