What’s Up Doc #21: Down So Long

I am going to put a sad little rain cloud over my head a moment. Fair warning.

Another contest has come and gone and I didn’t make it to another round. Again. Now I think I will probably not make it to the next found of NYCM either. Others are better and talented, and I have no ill will towards them. I am a fan always.

Obviously, something in my writing isn’t there, though. It’s readable but not, I guess, memorable or noteworthy. I think I have an ear for dialogue, but the rest just isn’t good enough.

What’s worse is that I don’t know how to fix it. Is it even fixable? I can’t fix what I can’t see.

I was hoping to publish one flash fiction piece at least. I got a rejection so fast, the pixels hadn’t even finished rendering.

I love writing, but maybe its time to accept that I’m okay at it — not great — and just focus on writing what I want, how I want. I can still blog publish without all the stress of wanting to be good enough to play with the big kids.

I might feel better tomorrow. Today isn’t that day.

Friends, I will be finishing part 2 of The Daughter and the Devil soon. It wants to be told and I enjoy telling it.

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3 comments on “What’s Up Doc #21: Down So Long”

pauljgies
October 19, 2016

So I’m trying to get (conventionally) published. I have an e-book on Amazon, and I have a blog. I write and write. But there’s this little voice, it’s really a whole babble of little voices, saying: when are we going to get published? Aren’t we good enough? Turned down again! Three agents didn’t like my chapter or whatever. Why keep writing? It’s just a path strewn with jagged pieces of my heart. Am I worse than I think? Do I just suck?

But I know I have a voice that’s different, that’s excellent in a subtle way. It’s not an easy sell, because other writers are more obvious, more flashy, more elevator-pitchable. It means I just have to keep trying. And so do you. Because you do write very well.

And really down deep I know I don’t write just to get published, or even read. I write to find out what happens to my characters. Clay and Rachel made it all the way to the inner end of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way, 11,000 light years from Earth: I could never have made that journey without them. And the same is true, in a different way, of you. “It wants to be told, and I enjoy telling it.”

So I will read your stuff. I owe you that. And the above, I wrote all that not just to give you solace and motivation, but to do that for me.

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- Laissez Faire
  October 20, 2016
  
  Thank you for this. It lifted my spirits some. I agree that a strong voice is important and I believe that is what makes writers unique. When you can read something and guess who the author is, that … to me…is impressive. I suppose,too, that beyond grammatical and technical errors it is all subjective really. I hope you find your audience. They must be out there right? I wonder if someone ever told Stephen King that his stuff was way too demented to publish? Hah!
  
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  - pauljgies
    October 20, 2016
    
    I’m pretty sure that did happen to King. I know for a fact that J. K. Rowling was rejected by more than a dozen publishers, and we know how that one worked out.
    
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