People have started blogging their year’s achievements so I thought I’d add my voice. Not that there’s a lot to list. Publication-wise, I had two stories. Wordcount-wise, well that’s perhaps a slightly more interesting story.
2010 was the year I tossed 220,000 words into the bin and started again. Years of writing, feedback and research. My trilogy had morphed to a duology. I received an offer of publication, yet I binned it all the same. I had even used it to score myself an agent, but… and this is a very big but…
the books sucked. And at the end of the day, there is entirely no point in me putting my name to something I’m not really proud of.
The year contained a few other challenges. Somewhere around the halfway point I really started to loose my nerve. Some people definitely thought I was crazy. Just sell the shitty books and be done with it. You’ve got an offer. What makes you think you’ll ever get another one? Other things were offered then snatched away. The boutique press that was going to do a collection of my short fiction changed its mind. My agent, after patiently and constructively pointing out all the problems with my books, decided to change careers. Not before finding me another agent within the same firm, I might add. It all worked out OK, but I spent so many months with my heart in my mouth, wondering if maybe this was it. Had I come to the end of the line after something like 20 years of grinding, relentless slog?
I’m not the only one, of course. Agents, offers and appreciations come and go. Luck can hinge on the spin of a dime. Arts is arts and showbiz sucks. It’s not the tough times that matter, it’s what you make of them. I’ve never felt the impact of those truths so much as I did this year.
So I knuckled down and wrote a whole new book from scratch. All I kept from the original version were some vague ideas and a couple of characters’ names. My secondary world fantasy became a tale of future earth. The process took 6 months.
I’ll be exiting December with a novel I’m proud and excited about, another one half written, the third on the drawing board. An agent saying positive things with a strategy in place for sales. A project with a boutique press that’s yet to be announced. A short story sale to a respected UK market. A prestigious editing gig. But, most importantly of all, my writerly sense of self has been reaffirmed.
Bring on the next 20 years of writing life. I’m ready to take ‘em by the horns.
ps: I’d like to take this opportunity to offer sincere thanks to
29 Comments
That all sounds both very brave and totally fabulous. Well done.
exhausting, mostly. Ta!
Yeah, well, brave things usually are exhausting. So glad they worked for you!
of course, if no publishers want to buy my books, I’m likely to cry…
And that would be Perfectly Reasonable, though unlikely. Good luck!
🙂
aww… I bet you say that to all the old ladies…
No thanks required! You are doing all the hard work yourself, and I know you’ll pay forward just as much as I try to. But I will acacept your offering of cocktails at the earliest opportunity. 🙂 Keep up the great work!
aye aye, cap’n!
rather embarrassingly, I’ve forgotten the name of those pink drinks we were all quaffing at WFC in San Jose. Something Sunset? Grapefruit flavoured?
Do you mean the wonderful Sea Breeze? (I feel like one just thinking about it.) Or was there another cocktail I have somehow* forgotten?
* By “somehow” I mean “thanks to imbing too many of them”, obviously.
SEA BREEZE!!! I have been trying to remember that name all afternoon!
And now you want one too, right?
yeah. sigh.
Sigh indeed. It’s hot and humid here right now. A sea breeze would go down a jolly treat.
I just knocked off a low carb beer. Not quite the same, really.
I’m on my third dry night in a row so even that sounds tasty!
my deepest sympathies
A Christmas party soon solved that problem. 🙂
phew!
Well it sounds like everything turned out all right in the end…
How awesome!
Jettisoning a book one has invested so many hopes in and starting again is brave, but also freeing – the next book will always be better! I’m glad you have proved to yourself that you are more than that one, ill-fated manuscript.
YOU are awesome. Here’s to a fantastic writing/publishing year in 2011.
hopefully there will be a little more balloons coming down from ceilings next year, but cool beans for the good stuff 🙂
Hard work and difficult decisions. A busy year.
And I thought you’d been spending all your time watching videos of dancing chickens. 🙂
Yay! Glad your sense of self was validated
That took a lot of guts to ditch so much hard work and start again… good luck with your new books!
That message was by me btw… didn’t mean to post as “anonymous”
no worries Dom!
So very proud of you!
It takes real guts to turn down offers, but even more to know that you can, and will, do better. The world is a better place because you insist on giving it your best.
<3 you
Peg x
Ta darl! Hope you had a fabby Xmas XX