I stopped counting my rejection slips when they surpassed 1,000. While a lesser man might weep with frustration, I have savored every one since that first envelope returned from the New Yorker in 1969 with an encouraging note from editor Howard Moss. Sure, it hurts to get turned down. Each one takes a little slice out of my. . .heart?. . .ego?. . .enthusiasm? But I'm not about to give up. I don't write to get published even though I love when it happens. I write because it excites me and makes me happy, and is…well…fun, especially when I'm on to something I've never done before. Nobody's ever done before. While not everything I write is experimental, writing is for me an experiment of language and meaning. I don't want to write what I've already written.

I'm tough. I can take rejection, but that doesn't mean I don't need a pick-me-up every now and then. Laurence Peter's The Peter Principle (A title close to my heart) was rejected more than 30 times before finding a publisher and selling 200,000 copies its first year. Irving Stone's Lust for Life, rejected 16 times, sold more than 25 million copies and made an Academy Award winning film. And poor Van Gogh, the subject of Stone's book, is alleged to have sold just one painting during his lifetime. Talk about rejection!

When I receive bad mail, I take out my copy of Rotten Rejections and remember I am not alone—

• Moby Dick - "We regret to say that our united opinion is entirely against the book as we do not think it would be at all suitable for the Juvenile Market."
• The Good Earth - "Regret the American Public is not interested in anything on China."
• The Diary of Anne Frank - "The girl doesn't, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity' level."
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold - "You're welcome to le Carré—he hasn't got any future."
• The Blessing Way (Tony Hillerman) - "If you insist on rewriting this, get rid of all that Indian stuff."
• Animal Farm - "It is impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A."

And of course, there's poor John Kennedy Toole whose novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, was rejected so many times he grew despondent and committed suicide. His mother refused to give up and continued to send the manuscript out, finally winning the support of Walker Percy. It ended up winning the 1980 Pulitzer prize for fiction!

Poet, novelist and Getaway Faculty Member Renée Ashley doesn't give up. She called in October to say her poetry manuscript, Basic Heart, was just chosen by the Texas Review Press as the winner of the 2008 X. J. Kennedy Prize. Congratulations, I said, truly happy that her fourth book of poems would soon be published. Renée never gave up, even after her manuscript was rejected 152 times! Read how she did it.

Next year, I will pull all my rejections notes out of their dark corners and have a 40th Anniversary party. Why celebrate rejection? I'm still alive and I'm still writing. And besides, I also have a few hundred acceptances notes which I would not have had I given up.