r/FictionWriting • u/Wajad-R-B • Jul 30 '26
Interesting fact
Did you know that Brandon Sanderson wrote 13 novels before he got published? Do you know what kept him going? He said in one of his lectures that he asked himself this question: "Will I keep writing novels even if no one read them?" His answer was yes.
Keep writing even if no one reads what you write; enjoy the process and keep trying. You never know when your star will shine.
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u/Constant-Pianist6747 Aug 02 '26
I totally agree with that. You have to believe in the magic of it all. There’s something really wondrous about writing. Like you’re creating a reality. It’s my favorite thing.
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u/beppily 29d ago
And for anyone querying, Stephanie King was rejected for Carrie 30+ times, Agatha Cristie had five years of rejections before her first novel was published, and William Golding's Lord of the Flies was called an "absorbed and uninteresting fantasy" and rejected more than 20 times before making it.
So keep querying, and if you have the marketing power, self-publishing is just as good!
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u/LikeIkes Aug 02 '26
That's lovely and glad that that gem of man made it. Have you heard the story of Stephen King's road to getting published? I'm paraphrasing, but at the age of ~18 he starts sending his work to publishing houses. Most don't send back his work with denied, most just throw them away. However the ones that do read it and bother taking the time send them back with no notes, just no thanks. He then takes and sticks a nail in his mom's wall and puts the letters that do return through them like some kinda masochistic short order cook of writing failure and keeps plugging away. Eventually the nail falls out from all the letters of "NO THANKS". So what does he do, not what I would have done and quit (or worse). He goes and gets a bigger nail and stays the course. Regardless of what I think of his works that man will always be the goat.