26 Feb2010Writer Unboxed contest & thoughts on publishing.
Genre fiction blog Writer Unboxed is running a contest to select a new columnist, and I’ve tossed my tiara in the ring.
Not only is this an excellent opportunity for exposure—vital to building your audience—but it is particularly interesting to me for its potential to chronicle a writer’s journey to being published, starting in the earliest stages with writing the manuscript.
As I’ve watched my friend Bethany go down this path, and read the sagas of other writers on blogs like Writer Unboxed and on forums like Absolute Write, something has hardened into certainty: if you write well and want to be published, it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when.”
Demystifying publishing
Publishing used to be this looming, almost religiously inscrutable mystery in my mind. I equated it with being “good”—if I was good enough, I could get published. It rarely occurred to me that the heap of books I’d bought, read, hated, and ranted about had been vetted by that same process. When I did admit that any verbal diarrhea could be published with enough persistence, I consoled myself (in that self-sabotaging way of which writers are so fond) that my work would have the opposite problem: it would be too literary, too erudite, to publish. Again, I’d ignore books by the likes of Tom Robbins and China Miéville that prove even the most indulgent and overwrought prose can be published, if it’s sandwiched between some semblance of narrative bread.
Not mine, I was sure. Mine would be the proverbial envelope that fell through the cracks, lost behind some civic employee’s desk, only to be discovered years after my death when a cup of coffee tips over.
But that masochistic fantasy isn’t any truer. Well-written—even over-written—prose still makes it past the gates. It might take a little more persistence, and perhaps some forced humility, but it, too, is published.
It wasn’t until I saw my friend go through the process, and discovered the internet communities of business-savvy writers documenting their own experiences, that I realized there was no mystical force field barring me from being published. I could write with as much adverbial antagonism as I wanted and still get into print. The fear—both of failure and success—melted. I realized that it was no longer a matter of “if” for me, but “when.”
4 Responses to “Writer Unboxed contest & thoughts on publishing.”
26Feb20107:51 am
Great post!
That’s a great way to think about it. When I get published…
26Feb20103:19 pm
It’s true. If we take our writing seriously, commit to it, WRITE, read, improve – I believe our work will be seen.
26Feb20106:40 pm
This was something I took away from my program, too. I spent so many years of my life telling myself I would never be published, because it’s so difficult and so rare and I couldn’t possibly be good enough, etc. etc. — but during my program, it sort of became instilled in me that it IS a question of when, not if.
There was something a professor of mine told me during my thesis defense … I can’t remember what it was now, which is sad, because it was a beautiful piece of advice. I think what it came down to was the necessity of being persistent. I know she worried about me because of how sensitive I am, but she told me that as long as I persevered and tried not to take the rejections to heart, I would prevail.
26Feb20108:21 pm
@Bethany: I’m glad I came to the same conclusion as you, as did many other writers like the ladies above–that shows there’s truth in it.
Honestly, it’s probably like any other process of demystification: once you understand how it works, it doesn’t seem so impossible and magical anymore, and then you realize you can do it, too.