An up-and-coming band was playing bars throughout the south in the 1970s when a Macon, Ga., record producer decided they were good enough for the big time. He recorded a dozen of their songs and headed to Los Angeles to pitch the band to the big boysof the music business only to find no takers. They said one song was particularly hurtful to their chances. It was too long and would never get airtime on the radio. But somebody eventually did give it playtime and it ended up selling a gazillion copies.The song was Free Bird. The band was Lynyrd Skynyrd.A school teacher with a wife and two kids was struggling to make ends meet. Rejection letters from publishers kept piling up until one day he got a call at school from one who offered him a $2,500 advance for a novel he had written. The novel was Carrie,and 30-some-bestsellers later, Stephen King is still at it.An aspiring writer started collecting rejection letters from publishers in a cardboard box: "When the box was full I burned the whole damn thing, crammed myself into pantyhose and went to work for a temp agency." Four months later she got a call from aneditor offering $2,000 for the last manuscript she mailed out. Janet Evanovich is now the best-selling author of the wildly successful Stephanie Plum series.
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