Decisions, decisions

[megwrites]

After looking at the current query score card, I've made a few decisions regarding the fate of the Tower!Guy novel.

If there's no result by the end of the year, I'm going to either trash the Tower!Guy novel and forget it exists or podcast it in 2010 - but I'm not going to spend the next five years of my life grinding my teeth out of nervousness and checking my email obsessively every hour for a novel that, so far, nobody wants.

Maybe it's a good novel and the market sucks. Maybe it's not that good a novel. Either way, the result is the same.

If I seem a little angry about that, I am. Not at the agents for not recognizing my genius, because if the novel were any good, they wouldn't turn it down. Agents are not the problem.

I'm angry at myself and the story. I feel cheated. I poured my heart and soul into it. I really believed in it. I thought it was a damn good book. Apparently, it wasn't. I think I'm angry at myself for getting my hopes up, for being naive, for not realizing the story apparently sucked. I'm angry at myself for wasting precious time on a story that I can't convince anyone to read.

Frustrated Meg is frustrated, if you can't tell. And I knew this was going to be part of the process. So don't think I'm complaining or blaming anyone else. It's all on me.

Fortunately, I have other stories to tell. This was by no means my only shot. And I love writing. Even if I knew I wouldn't ever get published in my life time, I would still write. I love it. I need it. It's who I am. It's who I've always been. As sure as I'm a woman, I'm a writer.

But if I knew for certain that I'd never be professionally published in my lifetime, I'd just stick my stories up on a webpage, put out a paypal button, and have done with it. But it's the hope (delusion?) that I might be able to make a career out of it that keeps me from doing just that.

Hope is not always the warm fuzzy thing people think it is. Sometimes it's a ball and chain that keeps you tethered to something because you just can't let go. There's reason it was the monster in Pandora's Box.

But eternal hope is just eternal foolishness, so come the end of the year either I'll have some kind of result or I'll start fresh with new stories. Maybe I'll get luckier, maybe I'll be better, and maybe the market will be better.

But I can't keep hoping (as far as this novel goes) and I can't keep being angry at myself.

Comments

[cericonversion.livejournal.com]

One of the most useful pieces of advice I got about pro writing is this way of thinking about what happens when a work doesn't sell: You can't tell where a point of failure is. What you can know is that this particular conjunction of work, market, and time didn't come together. It's a structural thing, basically, and by no means anything like a reliable indication that other works in other times and maybe other markets are likely to meet the same fate.

Setting a deadline for yourself is good. Really, really good. You can turn to the next thing and then see what to do about this one.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Setting a deadline for yourself is good. Really, really good. You can turn to the next thing and then see what to do about this one.

Well, I figure that deadlines for writers are a matter of good mental health. Because I honestly think I'd drive myself to insanity if I didn't carry on with something else. And I don't want to go crazy. I want to have something of a writing career before I shuffle off the face of this earth - so choices have to be made.

I'm pretty sure that I'd meet with more luck querying about the urban fantasy novel I'm writing at the moment because it seems like it's more in demand than straight up fantasy.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

This may be the only reason I'm glad I started in short stories and not novels: the risk to reward ratio is so much easier to contend with. I sent out a six stories the first year about 25 times and got nothing. My first sale was for $10 to an e-zine that lasted maybe three issues, and thank god for it, because without that tiny dollop of encouragement, I don't know how I would have kept going. I didn't hit a pro sale for two years, and between first pro sale and second one, there were three years.

Where you are now? I have been. And here is what I know:

1) Rejection is ass-kickingly disheartening in the beginning, and anyone who says otherwise is either a) lying; b) forgetful to a degree that they might as well be lying; c) a rationalizer in so deep they might as well be lying; d) an industry insider who does not have the proper perspective, and who, in representing themselves as a newbie who doesn't care about rejection, is lying; or d) a bit Aspie.

1a) I think a normal person doesn't get used to rejection until they discover that occasionally there are acceptances in this world. I just don't think you can take straight rejection with easy aplomb and grace, nor should you.

2) Learning to be objective about your work takes probably more time than getting good at writing. You cannot know if it is the best book ever. Or the worst. You have to accept that you wrote it as well as you could. Accepting that the book is not connecting with people does not make it bad. (Likewise, selling it doesn't make it good.) You are not required to not be frustrated by this, but you have to know that you are, simultaneously, both your own worst critic and your own biggest fan, and that you have no objectivity.

2a) You are the writer. You don't have to have objectivity. Eventually, you will have an agent or an editor who will be objective, and some day, in spite of all the gratitude you promised you'd have upon that occasion, you'll be just as frustrated with their objectivity as you are right now with your lack of it.

3) Write more. Submit more.

I will not actually link to my frustrated rejection journal entries. In part because I've made most of them private...

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

1a) I think a normal person doesn't get used to rejection until they discover that occasionally there are acceptances in this world. I just don't think you can take straight rejection with easy aplomb and grace, nor should you

Thanks. That really does make me feel better, especially coming from you because you've already made this leap so you've been where I've been. I always feel a bit wary about sharing my feelings concerning getting rejected, but it does help to share them and maybe it helps someone else.

But thank you. Not only for this, but all the help you've rendered during this whole process. I totally owe you a fruit basket or lunch or a drink or something if we should ever meet face to face. Just so you know. :)

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

I agree with this.

I wrote five novels before I sold one, and it's hard to strike the balance between making sure you do everything you should to promote a book, and using that time and energy for something you may have more luck with. But writing can be a really long process of apprenticeship. That doesn't mean it would take you seven years to learn the skills you need to write a saleable novel, because I know some people it happened a lot faster for, and I hope you are one of them! But the path can be long even if you are on exactly the right path.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's nice to know that after failure there is still hope of success. And if I have to write four more novels to get to the one that sells - so be it. I can do that. I've got plenty of stories, and for the moment? Plenty of time.

[scififanatic.livejournal.com]

Well, you do still have some queries out there so you never know...

Having said that, if you set a deadline to move on, I wouldn't trash the novel. If this isn't the novel to land you an agent, it doesn't mean this isn't the novel that can't be sold. Lots of writers sell works they've shelved once they break through publishing.

Also, in addition to perhaps podcasting it, have you tried entering it into Writer's Digest writing contest (or any other reputable writing contests)? There are loads of contests that if you win will also help with a foot in the door.

For example, this April, I won first place YA contest at SCBWI's Writer's Day. It landed me an agent's card and a request for the full from an editor with S&S, who was one of the guest speakers at Writer's Day. Unfortunately, I'm still working on the manuscript and do NOT want to show anyone until I can get it in better shape. So while I may have missed those opportunities, it shows that contests can be a way to get your work read/reviewed/requested.

If you don't like the sound of the contest route, you could always forget the agent search and submit directly to the publishers. There are still a few who will take unsolicited submissions.

Either way, you have options. As writers, we sometimes forget that we're still in control of our fate (it often feels otherwise when we're waiting on responses). You're a great writer and you're not alone in this! That's the nice thing about having a community, whether it's a local writing group or just friends to comment on your journals. :)

(Just throwing this in as a reference to the SCBWI contest I mentioned. I'm aware that so many people do the strangest things such as lie that I didn't want anyone to think I was just trying to make up this contest--I'm on page 3. :) http://www.scbwisocal.org/kitetales/KTCurrentIssue.pdf )

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

If you don't like the sound of the contest route, you could always forget the agent search and submit directly to the publishers. There are still a few who will take unsolicited submissions.

Well, that's part of the "until the end of the year bit". I'm going to send it off to the publishers who are still taking unagented submissions (to wit, DAW, Tor, and Harlequin's Luna line) and see what comes of that. And hey, maybe being able to go to an agent and say "I already have a deal" will make someone sit up and take notice. :)

Either way, you have options. As writers, we sometimes forget that we're still in control of our fate (it often feels otherwise when we're waiting on responses). You're a great writer and you're not alone in this! That's the nice thing about having a community, whether it's a local writing group or just friends to comment on your journals. :)

This. Right here. Not only does this really make me feel better, but it's nice to be reminded that it's all completely true. One thing I don't like about the query process is feeling powerless once the emails are in somebody else's inbox. It is kind of a helpless feeling, but it's nice to be reminded that it's not the only route to take. Which is why I've been so seriously considering podcasting this novel. Because I know a couple of other SF/F authors have done the same and had pretty considerable successes with it. I know that Mur Lafferty podcasted her novel "Playing For Keeps" and actually got a book deal AFTER it was podcasted from a small press.

Not that I think podcasting will land me a deal or anything, but it might get my name out there and put a few dollars in my pocket.

BTW, saw you in the picture of the contest winners. How come they put you way back in the back? They should have had your smiling face front and center, if you ask me. ;)

[scififanatic.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you'll submit directly to publishers; and yes, I know that I've heard of authors who approached agents saying they needed representation for a deal and that made several agents offer their time and representation.

As for the picture, they just sort of had everyone get into one group. I don't like taking pictures, really, so I think I naturally gravitated to the back. :D