What, Me Publish?

January 7, 2008 · Posted in Writing

(Originally published on http://mcory.wordpress.com/ on 10/25/07)

I don’t read many posts from others’ blogs — which may contribute a healthy amount to why I don’t get much traffic myself — and it isn’t from a lack of interest, just other things I feel I need to do. (Okay, maybe that technically is a lack of interest, but I trust you understand…)

The other day, however, I broke form and wandered around WordPress’s Tag Surfer, looking at the “writing” tag. I came across two posts in particular that stuck out so much I felt the need to comment. As implied only two sentences ago, they were posts that dealt with (imagine this!) writing, and, to some degree or other, contained the negativity that most writers experience at some point in their life.

The depth of the ocean, from http://tendell.wordpress.com/, and What do you call an unpublished writer?, from http://ptbertram.wordpress.com/ are the two posts I’m referring to. You can go check them out; I’ll wait.

Back? Okay, let’s continue.

Between the two of them, and not necessarily through any fault of their own, they made me realize just how wrapped up I got in trying to get Like Glass published. They made me see just how stupid it is to worry so much about, as Tendell puts it, “writing good literature,” or worrying about being #5 on Bertram’s list.

(Shhh…he’s starting to justify his failure. This ought to be good!)

Yeah, you’re probably right. And I feel like that’s exactly what I’m doing, that if Like Glass had found an agent or a publisher I’d think completely differently.

But that’s not how I want to think. I don’t want my self-image wrapped up in the beliefs of some jackass sitting at a desk in New York, eating a bagel and drinking a Red Bull, laughing at the hordes of ambitious young writers flooding their inbox. Why should they matter to me?

What I’ve been trying to get through my head the past week or so, is that there’s really only two opinions of me that matter: my wife’s and my own. You could say my boss’s opinion matters as well, because I’m sure my wife’s opinion would drop a little if I lost my job. If her’s didn’t, mine would.

And that’s what, as a writer, I’ve conditioned myself away from. I’ve put my self-worth in what someone I’ll most likely never meet thinks of what I’ve written, when there’s no need for them to even see what I’ve written. I don’t need to get published; I pay the bills quite well as it is, and probably better than a good portion of professional writers out there. If I have something that needs to be said, I can say it here. If people think it’s worth something, they’ll pass it on to their friends and relatives. If they don’t, there’s no reason for them to come back. Fuck ‘em; no skin off my back.

Patti loves — or at least claims to, which is good enough for me — my book. And yet I’ve pushed that out of my mind. Why? Rule #5,671 of writing a “good”query letter is “It doesn’t matter if your friends or family like your book; everyone’s friends and relatives like their book.” So I start worrying more about impressing “important” people, the people who’ll get me that big book deal so I can get a writing “career”. Why the hell should I disregard her opinion just because someone writing yet another book/article/blog post on how to get published tells me it doesn’t matter to someone who doesn’t even have the time to sign a rejection email?

Yes, I’m still rationalizing, still justifying my failure in my attempts to get published. But it’s because I’m still — even after not sending a query in over month — frustrated with it. I still tie the writing process to getting published, to getting praise when I’m done, to expecting criticism when I send it out. And I hate that. I started seriously trying to write fiction over a year ago, and I loved it. It was wonderful, something I never knew I always wanted to do. (Okay, well, I knew, just didn’t know that I could, if that makes any sense.) And now it’s miserable. Now I’m too concerned about what people will think of the story I’m trying to write, and I can’t concern myself with the damned story itself, and it’s just fucking stupid — all that matters is writing the story, and, if anything else at all, if I have to impress anyone, it needs to be Patti’s opinion I seek.

As for everyone else, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke. Or, joke ‘em if they can’t take a fuck. I don’t really care.

I need to go smoke — running late now.