My procrastination has taken me away from my current YA work-in-progress and has led me to children’s publisher Hot Key Books. In a bid to convince author John Green to publish his books with them, they’re wooing the American this week by inviting other authors who have been rejected by publishers to suggest suitable castigations to be made public in the style John Green’s online Nerdfighter punishments.
Whilst I’ve had my share of rejection from the writing world, I have to admit, despite the tears and the following self-loathing, I’ve never been so horribly rejected that I saw need to inflict revenge on the publishing world.
It did, however, make me think about those that I had rejected in the past and whilst I’m not offering myself up for ‘punishment’, I thought I’d take the opportunity to say sorry for my most severe misdemeanors:
Sorry to my first secondary school:
I rejected you by leaving you for a far superior school in order to get better grades. I was right to do so because I aced my A Levels but I thought I was too good for you and didn’t give you any credit for moulding me in to the person I am today. The bullying, horrendous school dinners, confusing colour coded one-way stairs system, and every time I called a teacher ‘Mum’ made me stronger and gave me the drive to get as far away as possible from the black hole of mediocre Hounslow.
Sorry to my date from ten years ago:
We’d been to primary school together and then you came back in to my life at secondary school and then when we met again at Office nightclub years later and we found out we were in university halls opposite each other, I genuinely thought that the universe was telling me we were meant to be together. The universe was wrong. I rejected you because you were perpetually stoned out of your mind but I really shouldn’t have said I was going to the toilet and then never returned.
Sorry to my hairdresser from six years ago:
Firstly I didn’t bother to learn your name and I apologise for calling up and making appointments with ‘the last guy I had, check your records’. I rejected you after you gave me a fringe and dyed my hair blonde. You should’ve really known better not to dye my hair the same colour as my skin, because I looked like a brown Avatar. I should’ve known better not to say ‘I’d like a change, it’s up to you’.