To commemorate five years in the genre fiction business, I’m writing a series of blog posts about my experiences in the hope they might help new or upcoming writers understand a bit more about the world of agents, indie publishers and the often harsh, often rewarding realities of fiction writing. This is me, Five Years In.
If you’d like to view the previous entries before continuing, please click below:
Part One: "The Acorn that Became the Teeny Tiny Oak"
Part Two: “The Teeny Tiny Oak Gets Run Over by a Bulldozer”
Part Three: “Writers Prefer to Explode from Within”
Part Four: “Reissues, Movie Options, and the Great Novel Conundrum”
JANUARY 6, 2020
PART FIVE: “GO BIG OR GO HOME”
It’s been nearly a year now, the dragstrip lights are still hovering on red (or is that a dark shade of yellow?), and things are very quiet. I don’t know what other writers call this bit, but I call it “the waiting room,” likely inspired by the Fugazi song of the same title.
My agent is working tirelessly to find someone who loves the novel as much as she does, which is amazing. A new story collection is completed, titled, secured an introduction from a good friend (and a wonderful writer), and is also hovering out there, in that ethereal space between my brain and yours. I hope it all arrives in your cranium soon, safe and sound.
More than once over these last months I’ve asked myself – is this the right thing to do? Is it arrogant to think my work merits a “large” publisher? There are so many horror stories out there, and by horror stories I don’t mean the fantastic and violent dramas written by King and Barron and Barker, I mean the real horror stories: the ones where the book fails and that’s it, you’re out. You’re done, mate. Back to the pen, piggie. The horror stories of never getting that sale, of never swinging the bat fast enough, straight enough, to hit the ball. You just watch it go by, pounding the air with your crooked swipe.
Go big or go home, you think.
Is that right? Is that it? Is that correct?
I don’t know. That’s the honest answer. I rely on people more experienced than I am to tell me where I fit in the ol’ literary landscape, folks who have been around a while, who know the biz, who know writing. In my head, the literary landscape is plundered by craters trenched by blown mines; mountains higher than the clouds with ridges sharp as dragon’s teeth; bug-infested swamps; a scorched desert dotted with 80’s-esque quicksand pits.
I could be doing it all wrong, it’s that simple. So could you… so could we all.
But you don’t know until you try. And try, and try, and try, and try. Can’t hit the ball if you don’t swing the bat. Can’t win if you don’t play. Et cetera.
And I hate to say this, I really do, but no one cares if you’re bummed out. No one cares if you fail. No one will notice when you’re gone. If they do, great. But they probably won’t. Sorry.
That’s why it’s gotta be for YOU. It’s gotta be your mission to find a spark of joy in the work, in the art, in the passion of a perfect sentence, in the hysterical maelstrom of a devious plot twist, in the sun-blown wonder of an idea you never knew you had. It’s about the work, and it’s about your voice, and it’s about your personal joy; the satisfaction of creating something no one else could create. God, isn’t that the thing?
I’ve talked a lot about my first five years in writing over the last four blog posts.
The ups and downs, the good people and the nasty ones, the triumphs and the confusion of it all. But there’s also the other things. The behind-the-curtains things.
Like the time my then-girlfriend-now-wife and I moved into a rental house, and we spent a week cleaning out a nasty garage – scrubbing off old oil, repainting the floor, nailing sheets of plywood to walls stripped to the studs – in order to make it into an office where I could work. The landlord got so pissed at us we nearly got evicted, but who cares, right? Someone cared about me enough to scrub oil from a floor so I could do what I loved. So that I could write.
Or how my books have taken over our home. Walls covered in shelves and titles I’ll never have time to read all of; stacks on the coffee table, in the bedroom, in the office, in the dining room. Packages piled at the door and opened with a mad, giggling glee to expose… more books.
Or how my family puts up with the never-ending battles of living with the emotional fry-cooker that is an “artist.” Depressed one second, angry the next, hollering in victory the moment after that. Sullen and hating everything, vowing to never write another word, then spending the weekend holed-up in the office because I had to get down this Amazing Idea.
Those are big wins. They’re victories.
I think, at the end of the day, what I’ve learned in five years is that it’s a process. It’s not one thing, it’s a series of things. It’s not one year or three years of failures, it’s a lifetime of failures. It’s a glorious lifetime of trying (and trying and trying and trying). There’s joy in that. There’s victory in that. In the trying. It’s astonishing and liberating and it’s success, believe it or not.
It’s Going Big.
I don’t know what the next five years will bring.
I don’t know if I’ll sell the novel or the novel after that or the collection or if I’ll have a thousand rejections for the next hundred stories I sweat and bitch and laugh and toil over. I. Don’t. Know. But I know I’ll keep trying, because there’s a beauty in that. There’s a sense of triumph in that. A triumph that is about someone doing what they love, regardless of how many times the world kicks you in the face. Of having support unconditionally to strive ahead, to try.
It’s been a great five years, and I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything. I’m thankful for my family and for the friends I’ve made. I’m thankful for the support I’ve been given and I do my best to reciprocate that support as best I’m able.
Yeah, there are crappy days and there are great days. There are stretches when I can’t write at all and stretches when I’m cranking things out so fast it’s hard to breathe. There are days I want to quit and days I can’t wait to write something new. They’re all part of the fabric that makes a writer, and if one can persevere there’s a niche in that cratered, mountainous, deadly literary landscape for all of us.
I’ll see you there.