Publishing Blues

Everyone knows that while the writing process can be pure bliss, the publishing process can be pure hell. Maybe that's why so many of us turn out to be bipolar. I had thought that I'd grown jaded to rejection, accepted the endlessly mind numbing form letters as translations for "not the right time" or "just not my style." I've read the blogs of writers struggling to get published, read stories of how Stephanie Meyer had 8 out of 12 query letters rejected and how J.K. Rowling's manuscript was thrown in the trash. So I've persevered, trying everything from querying agents to entering contests.

 

Today, I have received yet another rejection. Typically I query via email because I find the impersonal notes in my inbox to be much less abrasive than snail mail. When mailing your query or manuscript, there is a certain temptation to check your mail box every morning when you leave and every night when you get home. There's a waiting, a wondering, as you imagine your work physically in the hands of a person who could make your dream of having your work in hard cover a reality. There is the painful excitement of finally getting a response, carefully peeling back the sticky envelope seal, and pulling out the form letter that tells you that it's just "not the right time" or "just not my style." And then, insult of all insults, there is the cover page to your novel, forever separated from the manuscript that cost too much to print and was too much for them to mail back to you, which now lies among similar nameless stacks in some distant paper recycling company.

 

All rejections are difficult and have the tendency to stifle your writing, pressure you to do better, produce something more geared to current sales or popular topics. I tried this, in fact, and found it to be the most miserable five chapters of my life. So despite my publishing blues, I hereby vow a number of things, no matter how I feel tonight sitting beside the remnants of a form letter I joyfully burned over the sink:

 

1. I will never again try to write what I think will catch the attention of a literary agent

2. My works will never be designed to fit cleanly into a single genre for the agents that only market to certain genres

3. I will never, ever, write anything that has a vampire or werewolf in it, other than to make fun of 50% of current young adult fiction

4. I will resist all temptation to send hate letters out to particularly rude agents

5. And I will never give up on getting my work published, never stop writing.