Of life and risk
I’ve spent this morning putting in a tout to a publisher to see if I can find a home for the new steampunk novel, Intelligent Designing for Amateurs (it’s got comedy Druids in it). This never gets easier. I’ve been sending books and stories places for more than ten years now, and it always scares me witless. Yesterday I had a flash fiction rejection. Every time I go round a ‘no’ I wonder if I should quit. Every time.
By the time I was twenty three I had a rejection slip from every major publishing house in the UK to my name. This tends to be the way of it with first novels. Looking back, I have no idea how that didn’t stop me. I suppose I was young, and enthusiastic and not quite so easily crushed. Oddly enough, these things seem to get harder as I get older, not easier. We went round it with Hopeless Maine before Archaia took us in. The waiting, the hoping and the anxiety and then either progress, or another blow. Do not let anyone tell you that the life of an author is inherently easy. The rejection process knocks the will to write out of plenty of good people. Being a good writer is not a sure fire way of becoming a published writer.
Getting up to speak in public, is risk. I’ve never had an audience throw fruit, but there’s always a first time! Sharing an act of creativity is risk, and always invites rejection, criticism, negativity. Stick your head above the parapet in any capacity, and some git will take pot shots at you.
The other way is safer, easier. The path of no risk. Nothing ventured, nothing lost. It’s there, all the time, as an option. Every time I float a blog out into the world, every time I try anything, there is always the option of fail. For a writer, there is no choice to do, or do not (as Yoda would put it) there is only try, or don’t try. There are never any guarantees.
This week for extra anxiety value, I’ve been writing someone else’s character. Now, from a creative point of view, I love doing this. Salamandra (from Hopeless Maine) was Tom’s before I took on giving her a voice. Getting into someone else’s head, trying to grasp the essence of someone else’s voice and style – these are wonderful, creative challenges. Then comes the time of reckoning, when you turn it in and find out if they hate it. I’m waiting to hear on one of those too. If I was a nail chewer, I’d probably be down to the wrists by now!
Every time I think about choosing the other way, the easy way, I remind myself that there are options. You can live without exposing your soul to people. You can go through life without pouring your heart’s blood into projects only for others to disparage them. There are always easy options. Every time I run up against the doubts, I come back to the same, very simple thought: the easy option would be death to me.
There is only ‘try’.
