Nate Briggs's Blog - Posts Tagged "failure"
Sunday Literary Life - Feb 19
Sunday Literary Life:
In 2005, after hovering over the manuscript for three years like a cat waiting for a goldfish to surface - and thinking that it was the greatest Great American Novel I could write - or that perhaps anyone had written - I queried various literary agents about my fresh new novel "Dry, and Severe".
The universal response, without reading the manuscript, that it was "terrible". (Later on, I was to discover the weary consistency of this reaction. Agents never need to read something to know that it's "terrible". LOL)
After all that effort, it seemed a shame to just drop the thing in a drawer - print-on-demand was something people were trying - I had book design skills - and so "Dry, and Severe" became a reality between covers before I cheerfully handed out copies to friends: thinking something good almost had to happen.
What's happening now is that I think the books I gave as gifts are the ones I am slowly buying back. What I thought was the best book possible in 2005 turned out to be an embarrassment when I looked at it again in 2014.
New title in 2014 - two chapters completely thrown out ("terrible") - new narrative line - and the thing rewritten almost completely.
Time changes everything. And so a minor project lately has been locating all the mildly embarrassing copies of "Dry, and Severe" that still hanging around for recycling. I have acquired most of them for recycling at around $8 apiece. But you'll notice that some ambitious re-sellers are marking them up to almost two hundred.
Are those copies "collectors' items"? Do these booksellers know something I don't know?
Maybe cockeyed optimism is what you need, these days, in the book business.
In 2005, after hovering over the manuscript for three years like a cat waiting for a goldfish to surface - and thinking that it was the greatest Great American Novel I could write - or that perhaps anyone had written - I queried various literary agents about my fresh new novel "Dry, and Severe".
The universal response, without reading the manuscript, that it was "terrible". (Later on, I was to discover the weary consistency of this reaction. Agents never need to read something to know that it's "terrible". LOL)
After all that effort, it seemed a shame to just drop the thing in a drawer - print-on-demand was something people were trying - I had book design skills - and so "Dry, and Severe" became a reality between covers before I cheerfully handed out copies to friends: thinking something good almost had to happen.
What's happening now is that I think the books I gave as gifts are the ones I am slowly buying back. What I thought was the best book possible in 2005 turned out to be an embarrassment when I looked at it again in 2014.
New title in 2014 - two chapters completely thrown out ("terrible") - new narrative line - and the thing rewritten almost completely.
Time changes everything. And so a minor project lately has been locating all the mildly embarrassing copies of "Dry, and Severe" that still hanging around for recycling. I have acquired most of them for recycling at around $8 apiece. But you'll notice that some ambitious re-sellers are marking them up to almost two hundred.
Are those copies "collectors' items"? Do these booksellers know something I don't know?
Maybe cockeyed optimism is what you need, these days, in the book business.
