You are a writer

 

 

I believe I'm back from my writers' block. I don't know if I'm ready to edit/rewrite Gaia's Hands yet, and I certainly don't feel like writing one of those two books I have on debt (Hands and Gods' Seeds). The former would require me to go to Poland for a few months, and I don't have the time or the translator. 

But I'm a writer, and I can't escape this, even if I don't get published. Even if I feel bad about the fact that I don't get published.

I hope there are other writers out there who need to hear this: If you set paper to pen regularly, if you see stories out the window of the cafe or in a crowded cafeteria or on the street, or even in a collection of ants on the sidewalk, you are a writer. The world is yours to create with, and even if nobody else has seen your work, you are indeed a writer.

Musing on the search for quality.

Sorry I'm late; I had to write a couple pages on my final paper for my disaster mental health class. So here I am:

I'm looking for another developmental editor to look at two of my novels (the two I think are most ready for prime time) to see if I can improve them some more to get an edge toward getting published. 

I love dev editors, but I wonder if this is wasted effort. I read a tweet today that suggested that agents aren't even taking fantasy at this time. But I don't know if it's wasted time and money, because I want my books to be the best they can even if I'm self-publishing. 

I wish I knew whether the issue was the market or my writing (or both?) 

Getting Practical about Dreams

Dreams don't work the way I want them to.

For the last couple nights, I've been dreaming that I got picked up by a major publisher, and I felt light and strong and perhaps even validated.

Unfortunately, I know why the dreams occurred, and it wasn't because of precognition. I'd been working all weekend in moulage, and that's a very visible thing to be working on, and I got a lot of compliments on it. That translated in my dreams to getting recognition in my other life. 

Dreams pick up little fragments of real life and sort them out in a peculiar way. I've read that we don't dream of anything we haven't encountered in real life. From my experiences, I don't believe that unless I've been in a large underground city whose corridors walled in white glossy formica, accessible by a basement door in an old hunting lodge with a kitchen with avocado appliances. 

I interpret my dreams, usually by a Gestalt method, telling the story from the viewpoint of each significant object (human or non) in the dream. What happened in the interpretation of the dream of the hunting lodge became the first draft of my first novel, the one I struggle to re-edit, Gaia's Hands.

The dream of getting published is easier to interpret: I want to get published. I figure it will be as satisfying as moulaging. I can't wait to get started.

Slowing Down

So, I'm taking the advice of an editor I met at Gateway Con and putting novels on the back burner until I get something on the track to publication. In their stead, I've been playing with short stories (my first love) and flash fiction. And submitting same.

I've gotten a lot of rejections, more rejections than acceptances. This is not unusual. I have lost count of the number of rejections from agents and publications. I've become somewhat serene about the whole thing, as I can always revise and try again and feel that hope.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not really a writer anymore because I'm missing the angst. That says something interesting about how society sees writers, or how writers see themselves. We have to be driven. We have to fail. 

What if writing, rather than publishing, is the reason I write? 

Shedding illusions

This blog entry meditates on my horoscope from Rob Brezsny, whose horoscopes are in and of themselves meditations. It can be found here:

I have lost many illusions about writing, some of which are embarassing to admit, although I will admit them anyway.

• I thought people would be impressed with me for being a writer.
• I thought it would be easy to get published because I'm a good writer and because I'd been writing to refereed journals for years with little difficulty.
• I thought my first draft was my final draft because I make very few grammatical and spelling errors.
• I thought my talent would shine through mediocre query materials. 
• I thought writing a blog would get me lots of followers.
• I thought I wasn't a real writer because I hadn't gotten published.
• I thought my writing must be bad because agents didn't bite.
• I thought I should quit writing because I hadn't been published.
• I thought the accomplishment was in publishing, not writing.
• I thought writing would change my life.

I dreamed of book release parties (I still do), meetings with agents, having my picture on the back of a book cover, book signings, ex-boyfriends having to choke on seeing my name on a book cover (I have always dated nerds.) These, especially the ex-boyfriend part, are also illusion for now. I may or may never get to see the reality.

These were the illusions I have shed over the past several years. Except the last one, because I think writing must have changed my life, but not in big momentous ways.

Where to from here? 

Slush Pile

Prodigies is still sitting at DAW, probably in a slush pile somewhere, as the status hasn't changed since I sent it in.

DAW publishes science fiction and fantasy. They're one of the big publishers for fantasy and science fiction; the others being Baen and Ace. The interesting thing is that these publishers will take submissions without an agent, and ask for the whole book instead of a query.

But submissions begin in a slush pile, or a pile where unsorted books get a first read, and most people don't make it out of the slush pile. What gets the book out of the slush pile and into another set of hands is less how good the book is (though that helps) but how sellable salable the book is. 

I admit I fantasize that my book is on someone's desk, a someone who has influence in making decisions. Or in a meeting. Or on the "Congratulations!" pile. Realistically, however, it's probably still on the slush pile, waiting. 

At least it hasn't been rejected yet. There's always hope.

Working on a marketing plan

Even if I don't have a book to sell yet, I (optimistically) will. So I'm going to start playing with a marketing plan here.

Who is my audience -- other than my current followers here? 

• Readers of intelligent contemporary fantasy/magical realism.

 Where do I find them? (I have 20 regular readers of this blog and 100 readers of my page on facebook -- I don't think new people will find me if I don't look for them).  So where are they hiding?

• fantasy writer groups on facebook
• fantasy READER groups on facebook

  What will I talk about?

• being a writer
• progress on books
• anything published

 
How will I present the message?

• craft messages/blurbs about my writing
• consider excerpts of my work
• use hashtags: #gardenofeden #archetypes #prodigies #talents #fantasybook
• use instagram and twitter (I hate twitter; I don't ever have good pictures for instragram, but time to up my game)

   How often will I send messages?

• continue to blog/hootsuite the blog to twitter and facebook daily 
• newsletter monthly

 Ha! A marketing plan!

Rewriting another novel

I finished my rewrite of Apocalypse, and currently I don't have enough distance from it to look at it objectively anymore, which is why it will go back to dev edit shortly. 

So where does that leave me relative to writing? I can either start a new book, figure out what to do with the idea for Gods' Seeds (I'm struggling with that -- there's so much I want to do that it could be two books, my usual problem) or I could look over the post dev edit on Gaia's Hands and see if I can feel better about it.

I've decided to work on Gaia's Hands. If (when?) I get Apocalypse published, Gaia's Hands would be a prequel. As such, I'd like to get it polished while I have the time to and before I come up with any other bright ideas. Whose Hearts are Mountains, which still needs a developmental edit, would be the next novel after that.

Yes, I have a plan. All I need is for the stars to align so that I can actually get something published. If you pray, put in a good word for me.

The joys of rejection

I am beginning to like rejection.

No, honestly, I don't like rejection. After all, who likes rejection? Who gets up in the morning and says, "I'm so looking forward to getting rejected!"?

I like improving my work, honing my craft (although that latter phrase sounds so pretentious to me and nothing like the actual process with all its sweat and tears and cutting savage chunks out of a work in progress). 

I like looking at an old draft and wondering how I thought that was the book as it should be. 

I like the image of myself as someone who cares enough about their work to seek out a developmental editor. Who cares enough about their readers to not put out a rough version of that book.

I also like the idea of getting published, so wish me luck.

Drunk on Possibilities

It's Spring, and I'm drunk with the possibility of plants surviving the winter and popping up in my garden. I swoon at the possibility of seeds I plant growing up into lush leaves and succulent roots and fruits. I dream of my garden as I nurture it with manure and pull the weeds to prepare for the season.

It's Spring, and I'm drunk with the possibility of getting my novel published.  I send it to publishers and agents I haven't sent it to before,  envisioning the book's acknowledgement page, and hoping beyond my experience of rejections. The thought of being published makes me tipsy.

It's Spring, and I'm drunk with the possibility of finding my muse again, the inebriation of ludus, the joy of enjoying the energy of growth. My drunkenness makes me giggle, which makes people look at me sometimes.

In the words of Baudelaire, one should always be drunk.

Day 6 Reflection Part 2: My struggle

I may be moving away from writing. Or at least writing novels.

I just haven't felt it lately. The thrill of writing hasn't been there since I finished Whose Hearts are Mountains in December. I haven't started a novel since then; now I have struggled with proofreading/editing the last of my backlog of novels before developmental edit. 

 

The fantasy of getting published has pretty much died. I don't know if the average of 250 readers per self-published novel is worth $500 in developmental edit fees and sixty to 100 extra hours of work per novel. I don't know if I could even get that many readers.  I'm wary of the pitfalls the vulnerable writer can fall into: vanity presses and publishing mills, and will not consider those as choices.

The thing that really worries me is that, when I say "I could quit," I often don't feel a thing. No cheer, no relief, no regret, almost like I hadn't spent five years, countless hours, $2000 and an investment of identity into writing novels and trying to get published.

 

I don't feel bad about quitting until I write this out: I might quit my quest to be published. When I say that, I feel the death rattle of a dream, but at the same time I wonder if that dream of being published, being read is unreasonable, unworkable, pie-in-the-sky. I wonder if there are more reasonable things to dream about.

This is my struggle. Pray for me, or wish me luck, or whatever you feel moved to do.

Fantasies, Aspirations, and Goals

The average self-publisher sells about 250 copies of their work.

Hearing this statistic floored me. I have no doubt that it's accurate. It's just that -- that's not a lot of copies. I thought I was being conservative when I set a goal of 400 copies if I self-published.

I thought I was being realistic when I ruled out thousands upon thousands of copies and the New York Times bestselling list. It turns out that my scaled back fantasies -- even the 400 copies if I self-published -- are too unrealistic. Without realistic grounding, our aspirations are set by our fantasies, and our aspirations in turn set our goals.  

It's time for me to figure out how to pare back my goals, fueled by fantasy. My fantasy was that I would have an agent and would find a publisher of size (say, one of the Big 5) and go on a book tour where someone else made the arrangements for me and I didn't have to buy my own copies to sign and sell. 

In a way, this is freeing. This makes me realize that having 20 readers of my blog is perhaps normal, and that the agents who reject me need to so they don't starve, given the odds of someone picking up a book and reading it.

It also means that I will never get external validation of my work if I gauge success by my fantasies. How many readers is "enough" if the average self-published book gets 250 reads?  What does a rejection mean if the object is not quality but saleability?

My goals will stay the same:

• Get picked up by an agent or publisher, avoiding vanity presses and publishing mills

• If the above doesn't work, research and develop an effective self-publishing strategy, avoiding self-publishing scams

What changes are the standards for success. I'm still working on scaling down my expectations. This will be difficult.

Update -- not knowing

Sorry I have not written lately -- I'm still feeling discouraged, still struggling. I've sent the rest of my queries out for Prodigies, and I know there's always a chance one of the agents sends me a request for a whole manuscript. If I don't get a nibble, I'm not sure what to do next with Prodigies.

I mean this literally. I don't know what to do.

My friend Lynn tells me that it's okay not to know. I do very poorly with not knowing. It might have to do with my disordered childhood, but there it is: I don't like not knowing. I don't like not having a plan B, and right now I don't.

Except I do. I have Voyageurs in dev edit, and I can ship it out next. I will send Apocalypse to the developmental editor next, and there are other novels to be dev edited.

I don't know when to quit, perhaps. I don't know how to quit.

Maybe if I found something else that fulfills me as much as writing does, I would quit it. But I haven't.

PS: I may be having mood swings right now because of the high stress of finals. Please be patient.