"I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected"
About this Quote
The confession blends ambition with humility: reverse-engineering romance as if it were a solvable equation, then being grateful when the experiment failed. Louise Brown frames rejection not as humiliation but as rescue, a necessary interruption that kept her from mistaking pattern for pulse. The impulse to study a stack of bestsellers and isolate a repeatable formula is understandable, especially in a genre often caricatured as predictable. But the line between understanding craft and imitating a template is thin. Structure can guide; formula can flatten. What gets lost is the awkward, specific, unruly truth of real characters and the organic surprises that spring from them.
Calling the attempted book the perfect story exposes the seduction of control. Perfection here means compliance with expected beats, not emotional honesty. Editors, and readers too, can feel when a book has been engineered rather than lived. Gratitude for rejection signals a pivot from calculation to authenticity, an acknowledgment that failure can be a better teacher than premature success. It spares a writer from being validated in the wrong direction.
There is no contempt for romance in this stance; if anything, there is respect for its demands. The best genre fiction wears its scaffolding lightly and breathes because a singular voice animates familiar shapes. Brown’s remark suggests that discovery, not duplication, is the heart of storytelling. Studying others is essential, but the lessons matter only when filtered through one’s own sensibility, questions, and risks.
The marketplace tempts writers to chase trends, to sand down idiosyncrasies until only a shiny pattern remains. Rejection can restore the courage to keep the rough edges. It tells a writer to return to the desk, not to crack the code, but to listen more closely: to language, to character, to the stubborn, messy feeling that will not fit a formula and therefore might be worth writing.
Calling the attempted book the perfect story exposes the seduction of control. Perfection here means compliance with expected beats, not emotional honesty. Editors, and readers too, can feel when a book has been engineered rather than lived. Gratitude for rejection signals a pivot from calculation to authenticity, an acknowledgment that failure can be a better teacher than premature success. It spares a writer from being validated in the wrong direction.
There is no contempt for romance in this stance; if anything, there is respect for its demands. The best genre fiction wears its scaffolding lightly and breathes because a singular voice animates familiar shapes. Brown’s remark suggests that discovery, not duplication, is the heart of storytelling. Studying others is essential, but the lessons matter only when filtered through one’s own sensibility, questions, and risks.
The marketplace tempts writers to chase trends, to sand down idiosyncrasies until only a shiny pattern remains. Rejection can restore the courage to keep the rough edges. It tells a writer to return to the desk, not to crack the code, but to listen more closely: to language, to character, to the stubborn, messy feeling that will not fit a formula and therefore might be worth writing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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