Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul: Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit of Writers
400Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul: Stories to Open the Heart and Rekindle the Spirit of Writers
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Overview
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781453280300 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Chicken Soup for the Soul |
Publication date: | 09/11/2012 |
Series: | Chicken Soup for the Soul Series |
Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 400 |
File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Jack Canfield is co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul® series, which includes forty New York Times bestsellers, and coauthor of The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. He is a leader in the field of personal transformation and peak performance and is currently CEO of the Canfield Training Group and Founder and Chairman of the Board of The Foundation for Self-Esteem. An internationally renowned corporate trainer and keynote speaker, he lives in Santa Barbara, California.
Mark Victor Hansen is a co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Hometown:
Santa Barbara, CaliforniaDate of Birth:
August 19, 1944Place of Birth:
Fort Worth, TexasEducation:
B.A. in History, Harvard University, 1966; M.A.T. Program, University of Chicago, 1968; M.Ed., U. of Massachusetts, 1973Website:
http://www.jackcanfield.comRead an Excerpt
The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were not limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.
Helen Keller
- Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H* only to have it rejected by twenty-one publishers before Morrow decided to publish it. It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbuster movie and a highly successful television series.
- Richard Bach completed only one year of college, then trained to become an Air Force jet-fighter pilot. Twenty months after earning his wings, he resigned. Then he became an editor of an aviation magazine that went bankrupt. Life became one failure after another. Even when he wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull, he couldn't think of an ending. The 10,000-word manuscript lay dormant for eight years before he decided how to finish it--only to have eighteen publishers reject it before it was finally published by Macmillan. However once it was published, the book went on to sell more than 7 million copies in numerous languages and make Richard Bach an internationally known and respected author.
- Louis L'Amour, successful author of more than 100 western novels with more than 200 million copies in print, received 350 rejections before he made his first sale. He later became the first American novelist to receive a special congressional gold medal in recognition of his distinguished career as an author and contributor to the nation through his historically based books.
- British Writer John Creasy received 774 rejections before selling his first story. He went on to write 564 books, using fourteen different names.
- In 1953, Julia Child and her two collaborators signed a publishing contract to produce a book tentatively titled French Cooking for the American Kitchen. Julia and her colleagues worked on the book for five years. The publisher rejected the 850-page manuscript. Child and her partners worked for another year totally revising the manuscript. Again the publisher rejected it. But Julia Child did not give up. She and her collaborators went back to work again, found a new publisher, and in 1961--eight years after beginning--they published Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which has sold more than one million copies. In 1966, Time magazine featured Julia Child on its cover. Julia Child is still at the top of her field thirty years later.
- Dr. Seuss' first children's book, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street, was rejected by twenty-seven publishers. The twenty-eighth publisher, Vanguard press, sold six million copies of the book. All of his children's books went on to sell a total of more than 100 million copies.
- The author William Kennedy had written several manuscripts, all of them rejected by numerous publishers before his "sudden success" with his novel Ironweed, which was rejected by thirteen publishers before it was finally accepted for publication.
- Pearl Buck's The Good Earth was rejected fourteen times and went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
- The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer was rejected twelve times.
- Margaret Mitchell's classic Gone with the Wind was turned down by more than twenty-five publishers.
- Mary Higgins Clark was rejected forty times before selling her first story. More than 30 million copies of her books are now in print.
- Robert Pirsig's classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was rejected by 121 publishers before being published.
- Fifteen publishers and thirty agents turned down John Grisham's first novel A Time to Kill. More than 60 million copies of his novels are now in print.
- Jack London received 600 rejection slips before he sold his first story.
- Eight years after his novel Steps won the National Book Award, Jerzy Kosinski permitted a writer to change his name and the title and send a manuscript of the novel to thirteen agents and fourteen publishers to test the plight of new writers. They all rejected it, including Random House, which had published it.
- When we completed the first Chicken Soup for the Soul book, it was turned down by thirty-three publishers in New York and another ninety at the American Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim, California, before Health Communications, Inc., finally agreed to publish it. Ah the major New York publishers said, "It is too nicey-nice" and "Nobody wants to read a book of short little stories." Since that time more than 8 million copies of the original Chicken Soup for the Soul book have been sold. The series, which has grown to thirty-two titles, in thirty-one languages, has sold more than 53 million copies.
- Alex Haley received a rejection letter once a week for four years as a budding writer. Later in his career, Alex was ready to give up on the book Roots and himself. After nine years on the project, he felt inadequate to the task and was ready to throw himself off a freighter in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. As he was standing at the back of the freighter, looking at the wake and preparing to jump into the ocean, he heard the voices of all his ancestors saying, "You go do what you got to do because they are all up there watching. Don't give up. You can do it. We're counting on you!" In the subsequent weeks, the final draft of Roots poured out of him.
- The movie Star Wars was rejected by every movie studio in Hollywood before 20th-Century Fox finally produced it. It went on to be one of the largest grossing movies in film history.
- E.T, Forrest Gump, Home Alone, Speed and Pulp Fiction were all rejected by major studios before they finally found a studio willing to produce them.
- In 1902 the poetry editor of the Atlantic Monthly returned the poems of a twenty-eight-year-old poet with the following note: "Our magazine has no room for your vigorous verse." The poet was Robert Browning.
- In 1889, Rudyard Kipling received the following rejection letter from the San Francisco Examiner: "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language."
- Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant or seamstress by her family.
- Leo Tolstoy, author of War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was described as "both unable and unwilling to learn."
- Woody Allen--Academy Award-winning writer, producer and director-flunked motion picture production at New York University and the City College of New York. He also failed English at New York University.
- Leon Uris, author of the bestseller Exodus, failed high school English three times.
- Malcolm Forbes, the late editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, one of the most successful business publications in the world, failed to make the staff of the school newspaper when he was an undergraduate at Princeton University.
- After Thomas Carlyle lent the manuscript of The French Revolution to a friend whose servant carelessly used it to kindle a fire, he calmly went to work and rewrote it.
- John Bunyan wrote Pilgram's Progress while confined to a Bedford Prison cell for his views on religion; Sir Waiter Raleigh wrote the History of the World during a thirteen-year imprisonment; and Martin Luther translated the Bible while confined in the Castle of Wartburg.
- Novelist Carson McCullers endured three strokes before she was twenty-nine. While she was crippled, partially paralyzed and in constant pain, she suffered the profound shock of her husband's suicide. Others may have surrendered to such afflictions, but she settled for writing no less than a page a day. On that unrelenting schedule, she turned out many distinguished novels, including Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Bud Gardner
(c)2000. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul by Jack Canfield, Marc Victor Hansen, Bud Gardner. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments | xiii | |
Introduction | xvii | |
Share with Us | xix | |
1. | How I Became A Writer | |
Ronny's Book | 2 | |
A Writer's Journey | 6 | |
Vindication | 12 | |
1,600 Articles Ago | 17 | |
At Aunt Jennie's Knee | 22 | |
The Writer's Song | 27 | |
Write--To Conquer Your Fear | 31 | |
From an Abyss to the Mountain Top | 36 | |
Why I Write | 41 | |
We Were All Beginners Once | 46 | |
2. | Living Your Dream | |
Alex Haley--A Writer of Destiny | 54 | |
Dreams Do Come True | 61 | |
Dreams Lost and Found | 64 | |
Dreams Have a Price | 68 | |
For Love or Money | 71 | |
Take That Chance! | 75 | |
3. | Defining Moments | |
A Serendipitous Visit to Revelation Island | 84 | |
Writing Can Be Magic | 91 | |
Papa's Gift | 97 | |
You Can't Afford to Doubt Yourself | 100 | |
A Perfect Night to Die | 104 | |
A Chat with Alex Haley | 108 | |
Cash Rewards | 115 | |
Why I Keep Writing | 119 | |
4. | Finding Your Voice | |
It Doesn't Matter What You Write | 124 | |
Legacy | 128 | |
A Writer's Real Worth Is Inside | 134 | |
Writer, Teacher, Peaceful Warrior | 138 | |
Counsel from a Veteran of the Writing Wars | 144 | |
Coded Messages and Kindred Spirits | 146 | |
5. | Mentors | |
A Gift to Myself | 152 | |
My Dad Story | 159 | |
Writing from the Heart | 163 | |
Accused of Plagiarism--My Highest Compliment | 171 | |
Sometimes the Biggest Are the Nicest | 174 | |
So Long Lives This | 179 | |
From Noah's Ark Writer to Bestseller | 182 | |
Angels over My Keyboard | 186 | |
6. | Making a Difference | |
Painting Portraits on Our Souls | 194 | |
The Boy Who Saved Thousands of Lives | 201 | |
The Christmas Box | 204 | |
Writers in Prison | 212 | |
A Season with the Great Sinclair Lewis | 217 | |
Dean Has AIDS--A Father's Story | 221 | |
7. | Overcoming Obstacles | |
In Spite of It All | 226 | |
The Professor and Me | 230 | |
You're a Loser, Cunningham | 235 | |
The Obsession | 240 | |
Sometimes Secret Writers | 243 | |
How to Write Your Way Through College | 246 | |
A New Yardstick | 251 | |
Writing Is My Destiny | 256 | |
Writing for My Health | 260 | |
8. | A Writer's Life | |
Still Standing | 266 | |
A Man Called Charlie Black | 273 | |
Mixed Blessings | 277 | |
Be Ready When Your Editor Calls | 280 | |
Helen Help Us! | 283 | |
A Bucket Full of Research | 288 | |
Making a 'Pottment | 290 | |
Summertime, and the Writin's NOT Easy | 293 | |
Marriage and Metaphors: A Writer's Life On and Off the Pages | 298 | |
9. | The Power of Perseverance | |
A Strange Thing Happened on the Way to OK | 304 | |
Nothing Comes Easy | 307 | |
The Courage of the Long-Distance Writer | 310 | |
So He Must Be Right, Huh? | 315 | |
Mommy, Please Write a Book for Me | 319 | |
No One Faces Rejection More Often than an Author | 322 | |
Learning from Rejection | 328 | |
Consider This | 332 | |
Some People Just Can't Take a Hint | 337 | |
How I Want to Be Remembered | 341 | |
10. | Insights and Lessons | |
The House on Phoenix Circle | 346 | |
Nothing Unconnected Lasts | 352 | |
Lesson of a Lifetime | 356 | |
The Flop Artist Writer | 362 | |
The Miraculous Link | 367 | |
Power Lounging | 370 | |
The Gift | 376 | |
How to Be Madder than Captain Ahab | 382 | |
Supporting Writers of the World | 387 | |
More Chicken Soup? | 388 | |
Who Is Jack Canfield? | 389 | |
Who Is Mark Victor Hansen? | 390 | |
Who Is Bud Gardner? | 391 | |
Contributors | 392 | |
Permissions | 403 |
What People are Saying About This
Many books are written strictly for entertainment. That's good. We all need a break from life's woes. Although Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul is entertaining, it goes beyond. It teaches. Don't miss it.
(Sidney Sheldon, author Tell Me Your Dreams and 15 other bestselling novels)
Writing is passion. Passion is writing. Read Chicken Soup for the Writer's Soul and get the passion!
(Jackie Collins, author, Dangerous Kiss and 17 other bestselling novels)
It has been said that the pen is greater than the sword and that ideas change the world. I agree. This book beautifully illustrates the heart, soul and drive of a writer. I personally identify with many of these marvelous stories.
(Dr. Stephen R. Covey author, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)