Decisions, decisions
Sep. 20th, 2009 04:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
megwritesAfter 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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-21 03:11 am (UTC)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...
no subject
Date: 2009-09-21 12:18 pm (UTC)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. :)