Did some cool things this past week.
Set-up The Heart of Death (The Tarrowburn Prophecies, Book 2) for publication, put it on Goodreads, queried a handful of literary agents with a different manuscript, and shared my query spreadsheet with a fellow writer so he can begin his foray into querying a YA fantasy.
Yes, I shared that file even with all its red rejection lines. Make no mistake, friends, there are a lot of red lines. So much red. My spreadsheet virtually bleeds.
And that got me thinking.
I am really, really bad at giving up…
…which is particularly ironic given all the activities I quit in my childhood. Little League, gymnastics, dance, violin (twice), cross-country, and horseback riding lessons (too many times to count). You name it, I probably quit it.
But 6 books in, and I haven’t quit on writing. I can’t quit writing. For people like me, the need to write is like the need to breathe. It’s part of my DNA.
People say I shouldn’t share this spreadsheet publicly because it shows agents I’m currently querying how many times a project has already been rejected by others, and they’ll be reluctant to represent the project as a result. And I say…phooey.
I want to be transparent. I want emerging writers to expect to occupy the querying trenches for more than a few months. (Make no mistake. I’ve been in the querying trenches for over five years now.) As writers, we hear story after story about others being offered representation on their very first project. We’re shown blinding success stories from contests like PitchWars, which makes it more and more difficult to see success for what it is – hard work, not just blind luck. (Yes, PitchWars peeps do a lot of work, but that’s not often visible to the general public, so it looks like a quick and easy path to publishing, too.)
To the writers who’ve written one book and are distraught because it’s not garnering attention from the agents you’re querying, my advice is write another book. And another one after that.
This is life. This is reality. Writing is hard work. Editing is hard work. Querying is hard work. I imagine going on sub is…hard work.
Quitting? Not an option.
And that brings me to a new point (and, consequently, the title of this post). Fresh paint. I first saw this sign when my husband was just out of his initial surgery and was being moved from the Surgical ICU wing to a regular hospital room. Six weeks later, when we came back for an emergency visit and ended up admitted because of an abscess, guess what sign was still there? Two weeks after that, when we came back because the drain had stopped working, he was in extreme pain from the abscess, and had a fever once again, it was still hanging. Three days later, and then another two weeks later still, it was there. I’d bet money that when we visit next week, that sign will still be in the same place on the same door at the end of the same hall we’ve been seeing all summer long.
L. Ryan Storms 