Something Feels Familiar (Deja Vu!)

When I finished writing Once in a Blue Moon in, I think, 2015, I was so proud of myself. My very first novel! I did it! The story began with the premise of a woman traveling to her late grandmother's farm to pack up her belongings, and in the basement when she slipped an old record on the console stereo slumped in the corner and it belted out a 1940's tune, she was suddenly transported back to those days, in her grandmother's persona. As ideas go, it wasn't bad.

And, man, did I brainstorm a lot! I was never an outliner; never will be, so I had to be constantly thinking about what should happen next. I mentioned before that I would spend my lunch break at work tramping through a wooded path nearby, thinking, thinking, thinking. And once I landed on a good idea, I couldn't wait to get home to write it.

There were definitely some bumps along the way. My research told me that an agent wouldn't consider a women's fiction novel that wasn't at least 80,000 words long, and that required a lot of stretching. I won't say "padding", but that's probably what it was. 

PRO TIP: That's not the way to write a story.

Looking back, I had plenty of material at my disposal to write a book without padding, but I was too dumb to know how to do it. I wasn't just writing the grandmother's story, but my main character was later transported into her own mother's story. Thus, I had three separate generations to draw from.

Like all first-time authors, I really liked the end product. Sure, there were a few things that didn't feel authentic, but I overlooked them. After all, that's what you get when you have to pad. Don't all authors have to deal with that? I did a bit of light editing, just for spelling and grammar, took a couple of passes at writing the blurb, and then began compiling my list of literary agents.

I sure wasn't going to be like those whiny writers on my writing forum who complained endlessly about getting rejected. My submission was going to be a breeze. I would have to whittle down the number of agents who wanted my book, and somehow choose the very best one.

At first I only received form rejections. That was natural; querying is a long game; I knew that. An author's manuscript has to match what an agent is looking for at a given time, and that's not always possible to ascertain just from reading their wish lists. Rarely will a submission completely match what the agent has in mind. If one of them listed a "family saga", though, well, that's what my story was. I never just submitted blindly. Still, I would receive a "not for me; thanks", which came across as unnecessarily abrupt, but I overlooked it.

This went on for a long while. People advise querying in batches, maybe five at a time. Well, that was getting me nowhere, so I kept increasing the number, until by the end I queried every single agent who represented my genre. Not one of them asked for even a partial manuscript.  

The bottom line is, agents are useless. If they can't even recognize a moneymaking project, what good are they? How do they stay in business? I grew to hate them. And then I grew bitter.

Fine, you wanna turn me down? Just wait 'til my next novel! Boy, that second novel was stellar. I learned from my previous mistakes, tiny though they were, and wrote a great follow-up. This one had suspense! It was a whodunnit. It was a "is the main character just imagining things?" One had to read it all the way through to find out; they couldn't help themselves. 

This time the rejections whooshed into my in-box at breakneck speed. Agents couldn't possibly have had time to read the sample pages. Well, fuck 'em. I submitted to, in total, about 170 agents. It wasn't until I ran out that I went to small publishing houses. Now, finally, someone asked for the full manuscript. She even said my writing was "lovely". Man, I'd gone through a lot of grief, but at least there'd be a reward in the end. I began mentally calculating my royalties.

It took about a month for her to get back to me. She ripped my manuscript to shreds. I may still have her response saved somewhere, although I probably trashed it. It was that devastating. She hated absolutely everything about my story; my main character was unlikable, she found herself skimming through all the flashbacks. I asked her if she would take another look if I revised the manuscript, and she didn't even bother to respond.

That was the point when I decided I would never write again. Oh, no; it wasn't me; it was them. All of them. I would show them; they'd never get another chance to reject me. They could sit there and wait...and wait...drumming their fingers on their desks, salivating to get another submission from me, so they could rub their palms together and type out another cruel rejection. It was never going to happen. 

Which brings me to now. (Spoiler Alert: I did eventually start writing again.) This time, instead of worthless agents, it's readers; readers who won't get another crack at ignoring me. They can refresh my Amazon author page as much as they want, but they'll never find a new book from me to ignore.  

Do I sound bitter? You betcha I'm bitter. No, I'm not mad at the invisible readers. (I still hate agents, though.) I'm bitter towards all the hurdles; the impossible hurdles. The hoops one needs to jump through to sell...I don't know, ten measly copies? I'm bitter that I need to plunge myself into poverty just to nab those ten measly copies. I'm bitter that even if I want to give my book away, it costs me money to do that. 

I'm bitter that nothing works. Nothing. I hate that I had to debase myself to push my book on social media or in a newsletter, which I absolutely did not want to do. I hate begging bloggers for reviews. I hate being ignored when I have a really good product to sell. I hate others' success, when they barely had to lift a finger to achieve it. I hate reading about self-published authors who spend $10,000 a month to advertise. 

Any success I ever had in any endeavor was mainly due to trying harder than other people. I don't deny that I have certain innate talents, but so do a lot of people. Whether it was in my professional life or other pursuits, I was always working, working to succeed. Usually that worked out pretty well in the end. But not here. There are no brownie points for "trying".

I'm not someone who gives up, but sometimes life forces your hand. I can't think of one single thing I haven't tried, and believe me, I've wracked my brain. 

There simply is no answer.