Writing is a solitary process. It's lonely and frustrating. You never really know where you're headed as you write a book, even if you know where you're going to end up.
The only way to get through the writing of a book is to staple your pants to a chair, keep your head down and write the thing. Once you're finished, though, can often be the most frustrating aspect of the entire process. You've sweat, you've cried, you've squeezed every ounce of creativity you have in your body and bled the words onto the page. In short, you have a book. But what do you do with it? You publish it, of course. And that's the thing. There are two broad options to publishing your book: you can easily self publish it (Self publishing on Amazon is very simple), but most likely your work will end up in the obscure recesses of the internet and never be seen by more than a handful of people. The real test, though, the most arduous path, is the traditional publishing one. There are many blogs and vlogs out there that go into the incremental steps--query letters, finding agents, writing synopses, etc--so I won't go into it all, but you can do it all the right way, get so close to the finish line, and it can still slip through your fingers. That's possibly the hardest part of the journey. You query, you get your agent, you work on it some more, and then your agent submits the book to publishing houses. It's out of your hands. There's nothing you can do other than wait. And that's why it's so hard. It's like you're in a forced stasis. You've gone from typing on the project every day to emailing possible agents to receiving a few rejections to finally signing that representation contract and then, you edit and type it all over again only ... to let it go. Once your agent starts submitting the book, there's nothing else you can do. Except wait. And wait. And wait. And wait some more. You can see your goal. It's right there, just out of reach and it doesn't seem too far. In fact, it seems like a short dash--it's tangible and it's only twenty feet away--but the problem is, you're in a zero gravity environment with nothing to push off of. The only way to get there is to hope someone comes along and gives you that little nudge or a helping hand. Otherwise, you can try to swim, but you'll look more like Wile E. Coyote fruitlessly flapping his arms just after he's gone over a cliff. Only you won't even plummet. You'll just flap your arms forever, beads of sweat building up on your forehead, lungs running out of breath, until you give up or someone pulls you in.
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AuthorI am a writer. I write. Archives
January 2021
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