Get Moving

A few months ago, I took a step back from my fledgling blog and the serial I was publishing on Royal Road. After a string of negative comments and reviews (that shit is hard to take, no joke), I decided it was time to regroup and come up with a plan that didn’t involve me being insulted every time I put one of my work-intensive chapters up on the site. There was a lot of introspection involved in that decision. I wondered if perhaps I wasn’t getting ahead of myself a little. I also wondered, correctly, if I wasn’t being too damn sensitive. After all, even the best authors have their detractors, and I am certainly not one of those. But for my own sanity, I decided it was time to start thinking a little more practically about what I really wanted and how I planned to get there. And I decided that the diamond hidden in the poop, aka the actual advice in the reviews, was probably correct. After all, I always swore I wouldn’t be one of those writers who refuses to change and grow because of my vision. I want to write good stories. I want to write books people want to read. And to do that, I have to be willing to, you know, do that.

Learning how to write a completed story was a huge accomplishment for me; in fact, the first anniversary of when I started writing Reborn, my very first completed novella, was last month. Between then and now, I’ve completed a few short essays and some other short stories (part 3 of Thumbelina is rattling around in my brain as we speak, along with something a bit more sci-fi flavored) and put them out there for the 8 amazing people who follow my blog. Next came The First Taste, a novella which took a whopping month to write from start to finish. Even I don’t know how I managed that; I just know there’s nothing like that feeling when the writing flows from your fingertips like water, and every time I recapture it I realize 10,000 words have gone by and it’s two in the morning and I have to work in 5 hours and blah.

Lately, though, it’s obvious that things on the writing front have quieted down. At least as far as this blog and my tiny self-publishing career is concerned. My life, on the other hand, is a different story. Between a chaotic year at my job, some major issues within my family, the death of my kitty, the illness and behavior problems of a couple of my other kitties, and the time I spend with my husband, family, and friends, I was forced for several months to cut down on the amount of time I spent writing.

That does not, however, mean I haven’t been writing. In fact, I’ve completed the first draft of a paranormal mystery (like, an actual full-length novel!), and am eight chapters from completing the first draft of a fantasy novel I plan to turn into a trilogy. Both of these babies clock in at around 120,000 words, and both need a ton of editing and polishing, but holy crap!!! I’ve never done anything so writerish before. I could not be happier about how far I’ve come. Half the time it feels like the story already exists and I’m simply writing it down, and the other half I realize how stupid that sounds and how hard writing actually is. Cause it’s hard. For years, I actually had to force myself to sit down and write even once a week. Now I feel a day is wasted when I don’t at least get something on the page. I’d never had a passion before. Seriously. I didn’t understand people who devoted their lives to making or doing or creating, and it’s only now I can look back and see how much I was missing.

I have made one firm decision, though: no more self-publishing. At least, not the big stuff. I will continue to put short stories and essays on my blog, because I love to do it (and I’ll be getting back to it really soon), but I’m ready to try for an agent and a traditional publishing deal. After playing at writing for ten years, I think–I think–I’m ready to do it for real. Whether anything comes of it remains to be seen, but I’m tired of sitting here waiting for the world to discover me. It’s not going to happen. If I don’t get moving, I’ll be forty and still pursuing my quaint little hobby instead of living my passion. That just isn’t good enough anymore.

So the next step becomes finding the person who will love my writing and want to advocate for me. I’ve been doing research on all the usual things: agents, cover letters, writing submissions, who the actual publishers are (did you know there are only 5 large publishing houses??? Wow) and all the things you have to do to get someone interested. There’s a lot of work and a lot of details to account for. And yes, I have read the entire Query Shark archive. That alone took me a couple weeks. But I did it, and I learned more than I ever thought I could. What to do. What not to do. And how to get away with breaking the rules–at least in theory. Not sure I have what it takes to do that just yet. I feel like I know a lot and also nothing at all. Ask me today how confident I am in my writing, and I’ll give you a different answer than yesterday. That’s normal, right? It’s certainly no reason to give up before I’ve really started.

In short, I’m going to keep plugging along, because I have no choice. I love it too much. So how about you, dear readers? Are any of you writers or artists on your own journeys? I’d love to hear from those of you who have traveled this road before. All the research in the world sometimes can’t beat the wisdom of someone who has gone through the process and come out (successfully or not) on the other side. But be kind with your advice. I just might disappear for a few months if you’re mean to me.

Kidding, of course. But not really.