Description
Book Synopsis''Like all good diarists Paling''s musings are funny, tender and uncensored'' Sunday Times
6 April 2007
Writing income for the year so far: minus 300
''I feel that this might just be the year in which something happens. Then again it might not. But hope drives all writers on.''
It''s unlikely that you''ll know Chris Paling''s face or have heard his name. This is his diary of trying to make a living as a writer, through the typical career trajectory of what is deemed a ''mid-list novelist''. Publishing rule 6: there is no such thing as a ''low-list'' novelist.
In renumeration terms, writing is a career that often ends in disappointment and despair, and occasionally disgrace. Paling artfully explores what compels him and so many others to write - the battling joys and agonies of when that compulsion beds itself in one''s psyche, and a day without writing is a day wasted. A fascinating insight
Trade Review
Like all good diarists Paling's musings are funny, tender and uncensored -- Jackie Annesley * Sunday Times *
Funny and revealing . . . everyone who is convinced they have a book in them should read [this book] -- Neil Armstrong * Mail on Sunday *
A Very Nice Rejection Letter is a completely authentic account of what it's like to be merely reasonably good -- Thomas W Hodgkinson * Literary Review *
Splendidly entertaining * The Chap *
