Never giving up!

Bing…buzz. Bugger I forgot to put the phone on silent, and it’s 2 am, only two and a bit hours until my alarm goes off to go to the gym and to work!

“Daddy, I think I’ve had a nightmare.” Oh great.

 

Never as close to the cliff-edge as it seems!

 

Fix that with some little mantra we do to get rid of nightmares, and he trundles back off to bed leaving me in silence to stare at the ceiling. Oh yes, the phone.

An email from a publishing house. I half read it knowing it’ll be a “No thank you Mr Unknown author, thank you so much….blah….blah.” But it’s a little different, sure they can’t recommend the book for publishing (as expected) but they are keen and take some time to offer me some advice. Although it’s early I honestly just read the “no thank you” and went into a midnight sulk.

Then when the alarm goes off and I decide to read the email and that’s when I got to the crux, the feedback (and of course the offer to edit for me at a cost of $1,000 – yeah sure I’ve got that in the sock drawer with three kids, a car, a house, two cats, a wife, gym membership and subscription to Muscle & Fitness….I’m not made of money!) But instead of it being No but pay me and it’ll be a yes this guy offers me some pointers and even offers an edit of the Prologue.

He edits a LOT! I’m offended and dejected at first and then I see what he’s done, see what I have missed and probably how amateur I really look. He even says if I choose not to pay then I can do it myself and resubmit as they “like the story”. Really…..someone other than friends and family LIKE the story.

Maybe this isn’t a crazy wasted venture.

So attack I do and hammer the hell out of a new draft. I loose a fair few words and correct grammar and punctuation I had read and re-read so many times but missed. Going back to my psychology background I can explain that but I’m not writing a dissertation of linguistics or scotoma right now….no I’m writing a mickey take of myself.

So really after all this, it’s a week of rollercoaster emotions being ups and downs. Yeah, I have had rejections but even this sole glimmer of hope actually tells me there may be something in this.

Really what I’ve learned this week is to NEVER GIVE UP.

Nothing more to add to that really.