(no subject)

People are getting all introspective on me. I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon for a second, especially since I need to start typing up some changes and edits and sending out query packets to agents in two weeks. Or at least, that's when I want to have them mailed by. Tuesday after the first of the year.

Unlike my friend, I never set out to be a writer. I was scared to death of showing anyone but my best friend what I wrote the whole time I was growing up, and the only thing I showed her was my half of the giant X-Men fic we were writing, entitled The Manuscript. Which possibly should have told me something about future aspirations but instead only gave me the giggles. I wrote an outline and the first three chapters of a novel for my senior project in high school. Spent a month and a half or so on it. I think I still have that somewhere, but, really? It was crap. I didn't show that to many people either.

I can't remember when I started showing people things, but it was fanfiction. And it was in college. I wrote a novel for a character background for a one-night LARP, no fooling. 90,000 words. All fanfiction, imagine if that had been applied to something original. That was in about a month and a half, too. Clearly I'd gotten faster, or something. I'd also gotten a little better, but not much. And I still wasn't writing much original stuff, not anymore.

The first time I submitted anything to anywhere, I got an anthology deal out of it a year later. This should be a good thing, but it had the somewhat opposite effect of paralyzing me towards submitting anything for the next three years. Not writing, oh no. I did start writing original things, and I started getting better at it. I was pretty good at it. I was off and running, I was writing original short stories, original novels, whole worlds were coming out of my fingertips. I was so good, I was brilliant. And I was terrified.

Blah blah, bitchcakes. What with one thing and another, three more years passed. Here I am, approval from major editors and agents under my belt, I've cut my procrastination time down for submissions but I still do it, and now I have a more organized idea of how to be a writer for a living. And I'm still terrified.

I don't think I'll ever not be terrified. There's something really very shattering about getting a rejection letter that's one page and obviously form, saying that something you spent months (or years) of your life on isn't good enough. It's your baby, and they're saying you're not good enough. They're saying you can't hack it. That you don't have what it takes. It's a rejection letter. And all the writing books say that all the famous authors got stacks and stacks of rejection letters before they made it. Stephen King talks about nailing his up to the wall. (I know, typical, right?) I used to joke about wallpapering a place with them. In retrospect, I think that's a bad idea. Put them in a box so if the tax auditor comes around I can show them and say I'm conducting my writing as a business, and let them be what they are. Milestones. Attempts.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I don't know how I got to be, I suspect it has something to do with writing like a crazy person, but I am. Maybe not everything I touch turns to gold and maybe not everything I send out gets accepted, but I've had a damn high success rate for the profession I've chosen and the little I've sent out. I keep talking about sending stuff out and blanketing the agents market with submissions, but I haven't. Why? I'm a total coward.

And some days, I literally don't know why I keep trying. Not because I'm not good, I'm decent. I'm not as brilliant as I thought I was, but I'm decent. But because I do procrastinate. I'm still stubborn, I'm still pursuing this because, dammit, someday. But I procrastinate the hell out of things. It's taken me, oh, three months since Maui to get my butt in gear and edit and send out this novel. Three months! Two months, if you consider that I spent one of them waiting to hear back from the one agent I met at Maui, who I wanted to hear back from before I tried. Which actually. Now that I think about that I should follow up on her. But, yes. Three months. It's really time to get my ass in gear.

But now that I think about it, that's really not so bad, is it? I can obviously work to a deadline, I do it with short fanfiction stories all the time. And I can write. I can self-edit before I send stuff out, I review what I've written and half of it comes back in red ink. Multi-colored ink, now, but that's just because I have a new fascination with my multi-colored pens. Wheee. I can write. I can edit. I can be a very harsh critic when I need to be, and I'm getting better about writing query letters. I'm just not so good about doing it quickly. So, maybe that's the next thing I need to work at.

I was at a seminar at Maui where three writers talk about how long it took them to admit that they were writers. To them, it was just something they did on the side. They didn't talk about it until their third or fourth book was published. Me, hell. I'm a writer. I'm just waiting for my first big break. Except I can't be waiting, so maybe that's it. I have to be out there looking for it. I have to stop being shy and start being aggressive. I have to, not want it more than I do now, because, goddamn. But I have to push myself to doing something other than dreaming about it. And quicker. And stronger. I have to be methodical and determined about it. I have to hunt it down, kill it, and then sit on success like a proud little kitty saying, hey. Look what I did. See, mommy, look what I did.

... Ooh. I like that metaphor.

Right. Time to shower and get to work.