Today, I was thinking about my very early days as an author — I guess because I’m back at it again after taking a very long break.
When I released the first edition of my novel Hurricane Season in 2007, nothing about my experience as an author had been easy — except for the writing! In the publishing world (both then and now), when you’re a brand new author, the powers that be love to point out how greatly the deck is stacked against you. It’s like when you’re a “nobody,” everybody in the publishing world likes to point that out!
But to be fair, they’re not wrong.
The story I wrote was competing against thousands of others titles — especially because of the genre Hurricane Season fits into: Chick Lit. Women’s Fiction is one of the most crowded planets in the book universe, and there are so many fantastic authors out there who have woven together brilliant stories that you might like better than you like any of mine. But it’s all subjective, and at the very core, landing a publishing deal is basically a calculated guessing game that industry people like to make you think they can predict and control — until they pretty much prove to you that no one can!
So to be a published author, it takes a lot of guts to keep trying, and it requires an inner-grit that will carry you through the reality check that lucky breaks don’t happen all that often. And, you have to be willing to let this very personal part of yourself be judged unfairly — because when you’re a “nobody author,” no one’s interested in your explanations — even though you still want to believe that, someday, they might be.
It’s easy to get discouraged, but for me, it’s also easy to create fiction in my own mind that keeps me in the game. When it comes to the main character in my book, Eloise Butts, I’ve always had this uncanny ability to develop a compelling inner monolog that drives me cluelessly forward with a singular belief that one day, the world will see her and my storytelling abilities as the exception, not the rule.
Because everybody was a nobody before they were a somebody …
But when I think back to all of my early attempts to meet with the “right” agents or the top publishers in NYC, I mostly remember how bad the experience made my heart — and my feet — ache. Early in my quest for publishing Hurricane Season, I wore these terribly pointy, yet very trendy shoes to a series of meetings I had with a few literary agents in NYC. What I remember the most about that week in the City was how stupid those shoes made me feel when all of the agents I met with said some version of, “I’m very sorry, but we simply aren’t taking a chance on any new authors at this time.”
Deep down inside, I know I could’ve handled the rejection so much better in more comfortable shoes… But that’s just not how I roll. I always believe I’m going to nail it, and so the shoes totally matter…
But no matter what type of shoes I’m wearing, rejection is a crummy feeling. Yet for me, rejection has only ever created setbacks — albeit, a few very long setbacks — but never any permanent endings. And in time, I always seem to pull myself together by writing. So no matter where I am, or what’s happening in my real life, I can always see something in the path ahead leading me toward a new horizon for me and the stories I can’t keep myself from writing. My love of storytelling has this unsinkable buoyancy inside of me, and no matter how many times I’ve tried to kill my desire to write and share my stories with people, it never dies.
So… I’m left with no other choice but to keep trying.
That’s the reason for this blog, I suppose. I have a need to write, and I believe my readers will find me and understand me (and Eloise) differently if I deposit my honesty into this kind of format. And, because I’ve learned how to right myself after so many of my very humbling rejections, I believe I have some pretty useful insights to offer up. But the fact is, even if this blog is a total failure, I know I’ll keep trying…
