Big Ideas Six years of writing, 200 rejections — how Miles Franklin award-winning writer Siang Lu learned to live with failure
Apr 2, 2026
Siang Lu, Miles Franklin–winning novelist and co-creator of The Beige Index, reflects on six years of work and 200+ rejections. He discusses reframing rejection, writing through failure, shelving and revisiting projects, and adopting a process-focused, martial-arts mindset. Short anecdotes and readings punctuate a talk about persistence, practice, and the strange paths to recognition.
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Two Hundred Rejections Pinned To A Glass Wall
- Siang Lu received over 200 rejections across three manuscripts and six years before publishing Ghost Cities.
- He printed rejections and blue‑tacked them to a glass pane until he could no longer see his newborn daughter sleeping behind them, forcing a change in perspective.
Worth Comes From Within Not From Every Yes
- Assessment of a creative work's worth must come from within, not only from external validation.
- Lu says learning to be your own advocate is the path to resilience developed amid repeated rejection rather than surrounded by success.
One Book's Failure Fueled Another's Success
- Failure of one project can seed the next: The Whitewash was written to process Ghost Cities' failure and its modest success enabled Ghost Cities' later sale.
- The two books are 'brothers' and depended on each other's trajectory.
