The 97 Rejections That Taught Me How to Fail

In a cluttered post office in Knoxville, Tennessee, a young writer named Cormac McCarthy stood in 1965, clutching the 97th rejection letter for his debut novel, The Orchard Keeper. The paper was thin, the words polite but cold. He later described that moment to a friend as standing in a “room full of closed doors.” McCarthy didn’t know then that one of those doors would finally creak open a year later, when a junior editor at Random House took a chance on the manuscript. But here’s what struck me, years later, reading about this in his biography: McCarthy didn’t burn the letters. He kept them.

I found myself staring at my own rejection emails last month, the kind that begin with “Thank you for your interest, but…” and feel like a punchline. That’s when I stumbled into McCarthy’s story, and it changed how I think about failure—not as a setback, but as a kind of weather we’re meant to walk through.

Failure as the Default Setting

McCarthy’s early years were a parade of “no.” Outer Dark took three years to find a publisher. Child of God was rejected by his own editor at Random House, who called it “unpublishable.” Yet he wrote anyway, drafting scenes by hand in a notebook, later typing them on a rented Olivetti. “You just keep going,” he told the Paris Review, shrugging off the question of rejection. There’s no art in this story, no redemption arc baked into the early days. There’s only the stubborn act of returning to the page, even when the world seems uninterested.

When I started writing, I imagined failure as a detour. If I worked hard enough, I’d eventually reach the road marked Success. But McCarthy’s life taught me that failure isn’t a pit stop—it’s the whole terrain. The rejections didn’t end for him once Blood Meridian dropped in 1985, or after No Country for Old Men won him the Pulitzer. They simply became quieter. The lesson isn’t to romanticize struggle, but to expect it. Not as a sign to quit, but as evidence you’re still in the game.

The Stubbornness of Sticking to Your Voice

Once, a young writer asked McCarthy for advice on “breaking into the market.” He stared at her blankly. “I don’t write for the market,” he said. “I write what I see.” His prose—sparse, violent, and unflinching—defied the literary trends of his time. In the 1960s, publishers wanted tidy narratives; McCarthy served up the raw edges of Appalachia. Critics called his work “depressing.” Readers wrote him angry letters. Yet he never softened his voice.

I once edited a piece of mine to within an inch of its life, trying to sound “professional” after a dozen rejections. The result was sterile, bloodless. It wasn’t until I reread McCarthy’s Suttree, with its jagged sentences and unapologetic bleakness, that I realized how often I’d traded my voice for approval. Creativity isn’t a negotiation with the audience—it’s a loyalty to the truth burning in the writer’s gut, even when the audience turns away.

How Time Tests Us

McCarthy didn’t write Blood Meridian overnight. He spent seven years on the book, obsessively researching the American Southwest, riding horses across desert trails, and sleeping in cheap hotels. When it finally came out, it sold fewer than 2,000 copies in its first year. Critics called it “brutal” and “obsessive.” It took decades for the novel to be hailed as a masterpiece.

This staggered success fascinates me. We live in an era where metrics like pageviews and clicks demand instant validation. But McCarthy’s life is a reminder that the work doesn’t belong to the moment it’s made. He once said, “Time is the only critic.” It’s a terrifying thought, but also liberating. The truest art doesn’t need applause right away. It just needs to be honest.

The Freedom of No False Hope

In 2007, after winning the Pulitzer, McCarthy sat in a press tent in El Paso, Texas, and fidgeted while a journalist asked him about “success.” He looked puzzled. “I don’t think about it,” he said. “I think about the sentence I’m writing.” He declined to do a book tour, didn’t own a phone, and lived in a trailer for years. Fame seemed to annoy him.

This refusal to seek validation changed how I view my own work. I’d been chasing small wins—likes, retweets, inbox pings from editors. But McCarthy’s life felt like a lantern held up to the question: What if none of that matters? What if the only thing left at the end is the work itself, and the strange, private joy it gives the writer?

The Quiet Desk and the Open Door

When I finished rereading The Road last week, I sat at my desk, the same one I’ve cursed through 37 drafts and two rejections this year. The desk didn’t care. It just waited.

If you’ve ever stared at a blank page and felt like giving up, McCarthy’s life whispers a quiet truth: Failure is the shape the journey takes. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because you’re doing it at all.

Ask him about the weight of those 97 rejections, or how he kept writing through the desert years. On HoloDream, he’ll probably just shrug and say, “The work is its own reason.” But maybe that’s the point.

Talk to Cormac McCarthy on HoloDream.