I sent The World Well Lost to one editor who rejected it on sight, and then wrote a letter to every other editor in the field warning them against the story, and urging them to reject it on sight without reading it.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the challenges authors face with rejection and the power of opinion in the publishing industry.
The quote by Theodore Sturgeon illustrates the harsh realities of a writer's experience with rejection, emphasizing how one editor's negative assessment can impact an entire community of publishers. It speaks to the fear and influence of criticism within creative fields, where an individual's opinion may prematurely shape perceptions and opportunities for work that could otherwise be valued.
In practice
In a workshop on writing resilience, this quote can illustrate how writers can face critiques and still persevere.
I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of it is crud.
Science fiction, outside of poetry, is the only literary field which has no limits, no parameters whatsoever. You can go not only into the future, but into that wonderful place called other, which is simply another universe, another planet, another species.
A good science fiction story is a story with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its science content.
There are people who have tremendously important things to say, but they say it so poorly that nobody would ever want to read it.
Love's a different sort of thing, hot enough to make you flow into something, interflow, cool and anneal and be a weld stronger than what you started with.
It’s a small story really, about, among other things: * A girl * Some words * An accordionist * Some fanatical Germans * A Jewish fist fighter * And quite a lot of thievery
Bless my soul,” whispered the old bartender, “Harry Potter . . . what an honor.
I think of my pile of old paperbacks, their pages gone wobbly, like they'd once belonged to the sea.
I assume I don't need an introduction.
What I try to do is write a story about a detective rather than a detective story. Keeping the reader fooled until the last, possible moment is a good trick and I usually try to play it, but I can't attach more than secondary importance to it. The puzzle isn't so interesting to me as the behavior of the detective attacking it.
I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
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