Another one …?
Submissions rejections trickle into my inbox like a dripping faucet. I find it overwhelming. However, the heartache seems to bring hope with each reply. At least somebody is reading my manuscript. They may not find it as the right fit for them or some may just be polite platitudes of a form rejection feeling like a gut punch that maybe I’m not the right fit. But I read again and again how even J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter was rejected a dozen times before being accepted. Other best-sellers, rejected more than 40 times before finding the right agent. So, I hold out hope.
Fumbling my way through the path to becoming a traditionally published author, I dwell on a few regrets. But I can’t hold onto them as such, because they were also very valuable learning experiences. Back in 2019 when I self published my first book with Xlibris, I didn’t even realize I was in the “self-published” category. I thought that was the route I was supposed to take. Finding someone willing to publish my work for a price because I was a nobody in the book world. I didn’t realize there were other options. My husband told me back then, even if we don’t make a dime on this book at least it will last forever as a gift to our boys. I was romanticized by that idea. I immortalized their loving corgi in a story that I would read over and over to them before bed. It’s true though, I think I’ve raked in a whopping $400 dollars in sales after spending significantly more to produce. But I didn’t realize a marketing degree was nearly essential to my success. So now I research endlessly to rectify that shortcoming.
Now I look back and wish under a newly acquired and ever-forming knowledge that I should have held out for someone skilled enough to bring my corgi and my story to the world. As a former journalist, I love to write, tell stories and capture the world around me through words. This world of book publishing is like a foreign land and I’m discovering how to communicate with the natives one mispronounced word at a time.
I’ve been advised to start media channels and create this website, but I wonder who really cares what I would have to say in a blog. I prefer stories. Fantastical creations that distract for the mundane truth of my life. I love to relate to folks around me by drawing us into the stories of the improbable. But I digress.
On this adventure in reality, the creatures I avoid the most after a brief encounter, are the “I’ll review your story if you review mine.” This seems so disingenuous to me as I discover these groups. Their village people are fierce and the rules are absolute, but the idea of such an exchange seems a disillusioned attempt to bulk up your reviews on Amazon. I’m sure that’s “just how it’s done.” So, I guess for now, I’ll merely side-step that part of the forest.
I continue to learn what I deem as valid knowledge through the Jerry Jenkins Writer’s Guild. I have found this venue extremely helpful in navigating this dense, entangled path. His courses have bushwhacked a few trails for me lately, especially in knowing that traditional publishing is where my passion lies. I want it so bad I’m willing to keep tip toeing from one foggy webpage village to the next.
Sometimes I feel that the light at the end may just be a train ready to derail my efforts, but I keep reminding myself that it’s always more productive to view that light as the end of the tunnel and a beacon into my future.
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