[EMMAXIS]

I got two rejections today for Ages of Aenya, but, just like in love, after the first few heartbreaks things do get easier. I no longer consider committing sepukka after each rejection, and I no longer jump to the conclusion that rejection = I suck.

Also, I've made a few realizations that I would like to share with my writing brethren out there in SFF Forum Land:

Stop thinking in terms of whether you're good enough. "Good" and "bad" are such arbitrary terms for judging fiction that they become meaningless. Naturally, if you were to write a string of gibberish without any proper spelling, grammar or coherence of any kind, that would be kinda bad, but I doubt that is anyone's problem here. A better way to look at things is to determine whether someone is crazy enough to shell out their hard earned $ for your work. In this context, I feel much less pressure, less the need to compare myself to every book ever written. And, heck, if someone has a fetish for strings of gibberish, why not?

Also, has anyone heard of a book called The Writer's Book of Hope? I went over a few pages on Amazon and I really liked what I read. I mean, it's better than The First Five Pages which made me want to commit hare-kiri.

[Holbrook]

Over five years I submitted four books, my submissions to publishers and agents must have topped well over 200 for the four manuscripts. (Some poor agents got one for each book!) But I went from thanks, but no thanks for the first book, to requests for sample chapters and whole manuscripts for the last one of the four, which eventually caught me a top notch agent.

So, don't give up.

When I started trying to sell my work, the writer, Peter Moorwood, told me, in ten years, if you stick at it and keep improving as you are, you will be with a top agent. It was four months short of ten years when I signed... strange or what? :eek:

[EMMAXIS]

Over five years I submitted four books, my submissions to publishers and agents must have topped well over 200 for the four manuscripts. (Some poor agents got one for each book!) But I went from thanks, but no thanks for the first book, to requests for sample chapters and whole manuscripts for the last one of the four, which eventually caught me a top notch agent.

So, don't give up.

When I started trying to sell my work, the writer, Peter Moorwood, told me, in ten years, if you stick at it and keep improving as you are, you will be with a top agent. It was four months short of ten years when I signed... strange or what? :eek:


Great . . . so I have until I'm 46 to give up! ;-) But maybe I am ahead of the game a bit, since this is my third novel.

[Holbrook]

Great . . . so I have until I'm 46 to give up! ;-) But maybe I am ahead of the game a bit, since this is my third novel.

I was 44 when I started trying...;)

[hippokrene]

Stop thinking in terms of whether you're good enough. "Good" and "bad" are such arbitrary terms for judging fiction that they become meaningless.
If nothing else, good and bad aren't arbitrary *to me* so they're not meaningless *for me.*

hare-kiri.
Just so you know, hare-kiri is a word that's primarily spoken.

[EMMAXIS]

If nothing else, good and bad aren't arbitrary *to me* so they're not meaningless *for me.*


Just so you know, hare-kiri is a word that's primarily spoken.



I was suggesting looking at things in a different way to help struggling writers, like myself, with the publishing world. A publishers' main concern is selling, and if publishing is your goal, then good and bad are defined as whatever people want to pay to read. I know people who claim they don't care about publishing. If you have your own personal conception of good and bad, more power to you.

Nick

[Princeroth]

A tutor said something funny to me yesterday.

I'll paraphrase "Don't write a book to get famous. Get famous first and then write a book."

I should start working on those viral youtube videos...

[EMMAXIS]

A tutor said something funny to me yesterday.

I'll paraphrase "Don't write a book to get famous. Get famous first and then write a book."

I should start working on those viral youtube videos...



Yes, that just goes to my point. What publisher believes Pamela Anderson or Dennis Rodman or Sarah Palin or Anne Coulter or Glen Beck has literary merit? But those people are famous and so their books sell.

Since we're not famous, we just have to do things the hard way, which is to write something people want to read. The people who read my last, self-published book seemed to have enjoyed it, so I believe there is a market for that story, but without a publisher people won't take a chance on it. Most people assume (and for good reason) that if it's self-published it's crap.

N. A.

[Wojciehowicz]

A tutor said something funny to me yesterday.

I'll paraphrase "Don't write a book to get famous. Get famous first and then write a book."

I should start working on those viral youtube videos...

This is an incredibly difficult problem for those of us who do not want to be famous, or take part in the cult of personality mindset. I noted at Borders the other day that many fiction novels have the author's name in larger print on the cover than the book title. I just want to make an income of some sort, not be known.

[EMMAXIS]

This is an incredibly difficult problem for those of us who do not want to be famous, or take part in the cult of personality mindset. I noted at Borders the other day that many fiction novels have the author's name in larger print on the cover than the book title. I just want to make an income of some sort, not be known.


I agree. I could be listed as "Anonymous" and I'd be happy, just as long as the work itself takes recognition. My books are my children---if they succeed then I've succeeded. But many publishers insist on the huge print for authors' names because they know many readers buy books based solely on who the author is. STEPHEN KING is the best example, which is why, I think, he wrote for a while under a pseudonym to see if he could still sell books based on his skill.

What irks me even more than that are the reviews on the back covers. For me, they almost never turn out to be true. Every new book out there is either a masterpiece or a new classic or brilliant. For a while there, I remember, a lot of new author's were the "successor to Tolkien".

I was so annoyed by this that when I did my first book signing, I made a sign that read, "NOT the successor to Tolkien, but the FIRST Nick Alimonos!"