Toni Morrison’s Rejection Letters

This excellent piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books by Melina Moe pays homage to Toni Morrison’s rejection letters during her tenure as an editor at Random House.

As someone who has had to write a ton of rejection letters, it can often feel like a bleak chore and after writing hundreds, if not thousands of them (Eek! Sorry!) you can start to feel like you’re running out of polite, helpful things to say. Writing some rejection letters will break your heart, because you may see an opportunity when your publisher just doesn’t. (Ask me about the time a publisher told me “books like this don’t sell” when I brought Crying in H Mart to my ed board meeting.) But a majority of the time either something just doesn’t click for you or the manuscript is pretty good, but not great and could use more work. It can be difficult to write a series of polite, yet encouraging rejection letters, especially after you burn through a huge pile of submissions and come out the other end with nothing to show for it.

This LARB piece delves into the art of Morrison’s rejections and felt kind of inspiring. Morrison doesn’t shield the author from the banalities and frustrations of the publishing industry. She manages to be forthright and, at times, brutally honest while encouraging.

If I’m ever back behind a desk writing rejections again, I’ll definitely give this piece another read to help me focus my intentions. I think there’s a right way to send out rejections and I believe Toni Morrison figured out that way.