Kate Di Camillo winner if 3 Newberry Awards for Children's Literature received an incredible 473 rejection letters within a 6-year period before her first novel 'Because of Winn-Dixie' was published.

When Kate talks to students she uses a theme of persistence and determination. She likes to make a guessing game out of the number of times her writing was knocked back.

Children usually start at 5, then go to 10 and then think they are brave and say 50.

When Kate says no it is way more than that, the students are puzzled as to why she kept going and going only to be rejected again and again.

She explains to students that while she could not control whether she was talented she could keep on trying.

I think I would have given up probably before 100 rejection letters as my self-belief, self-esteem and self-worth would have been exhausted.

I assume that with each rejection she was spurred on to write something new or improve what she had written so the same book was not rejected 473 times. It was the tally of letters for all the writing she submitted over the years.

I find this an amazing story of determination or was it sheer stubbornness that kept her going.

I wonder if she had not been published after 473 rejections would she have gone to 500 or more. Did she have a cut-off point?

Would you have had the determination to keep going?

It can be for anything not just writing, anything you get rejected for, or are not succeeding at, would you persist no matter how long it took?

Or would you say I did my best and give up when you had given all you could?

Leah

A Moodscope member