This is the Journey of Writing

You start out feeling a bit lost and directionless, but you know you want to do something. An idea hits you and causes inspiration that lights up the room and spins you around in its tingly clutches. That tiny, hopeful voice that plays with your subconscious when you aren’t paying attention says, “This could be big.” Glittery-eyed excitement dances around you. You dive in. Slowly, things build and your progress pushes you further and further into your project and before you know it, it has consumed you in almost every conceivable way. You are tarred to your project and bit by bit, you push yourself a little harder, and then a little harder still. Your personal expectations get a little higher, and a little higher until they begin to get elevation sickness, but the giddiness keeps you pushing. You become an endless one way street. Your relationships begin to sway under the strain, and while you see it, you can’t sacrifice what you are doing. You convince yourself you have balance and it’s all okay. Little hissy fit meltdowns that are not understandable to others begin to litter  your feebackless chamber. Small things pile up against you and your project, but they feel like boulders. The insular and individualistic nature of it all begins to eat at you and self doubt creeps in, its long, snaky fingers tarnishing everything. A bigger meltdown leaves you flailing about on the floor, but you can’t give up. You grasp at a tenuous lifeline, but next week there is an even bigger ‘what am I doing to myself’ moment that sweeps you up and bangs you around until you don’t know which wall has bruised you the worst. You shout off a cliff, your anger curled like a dirty fist. You question each and every thing about yourself, your abilities, your possibly lost sanity, and of course your project, its merit and pretty much everything connected to it. You have to throw in the towel. It’s the only way to rebalance the scales. Two hours later, it’s like the meltdowns and bruising never happened. You are up off the floor feeling as refreshed, inspired, and raring to go as if you just stepped out of a rejuvenating shower in the fountain of youth and optimism. This is the journey of writing.

–inspired by the movie Julie & Julia as Julie’s life showed me that I am not the only one who was been through this wretchedly joyous journey.

Querying and Maintaining Your Self-Esteem

First of all, self-esteem in a writer is highly over-rated. Really, what are you planning to do with self-esteem anyway? Turn into some snotty, old curmudgeon? That’s what I figured. A little bit of healthy self-doubt is good for writers. It pushes us to struggle to the next level. It makes us humble.

If you aren’t feeling humble enough these days, try querying. Yowzers. (For those blissfully out of the loop, querying is when writers send query letters to literary agents, requesting representation. (A query letter is a business letter describing one’s work in hopes that it will interest the agent, who reads approximately 20-120 of these letters a day, prompting them to say, “Yes, send me the first 50 pages of your project so I can look them over.”). If you are lucky (and approximately in the top 1-5% of those querying), the agent will reply asking for a ‘partial.’ And no, they aren’t asking you to get them revved up. A partial is a small sample of your manuscript. Usually, this covers about the first 50 pages (although that can vary). With the convenience of email, there are some agents who ask for the first 50 pages right off the bat, along with the query. If the agent likes what they see, they will ask for a ‘full.’ A full is the whole manuscript. If they like that and feel passionate about it, they will offer representation. Occasionally, they will ask to see changes first. If you think you can work together, you sign a contract, the agent helps you put some more polish on your work, and then they approach publishing house editors on your behalf in hopes of landing a book deal.

The first part of querying (after you have removed all the hair from your head through the masochistic method of yanking it out, one small tuft at a time, aka, writing and editing the query letter approximately 80,000 times) is doing your research. This means cruising agency websites trying to find a match. (You can also use handy services like agentquery.com which gives you a list of agents who represent what you’re peddling and provide info on them. Still, you should do a cruise by the agency website to double check, etc.) This is where my knees get a little wobbly from time to time. Why? Some of these agency websites are mighty intimidating for a first-time novelist.

For example, a long list of big name authors who make a decent living curling up with their computer and pumping out stories–just a little bit intimidating when you think of the agent helping them one minute, then turning around to help you and your incorrect comma usage the next. Or how about sites that say things like, “We welcome talented writers….” How do I know if I’m a talented writer? Writing is so subjective. To say you have talent is like saying, “Look at me and my ginormous ego! Woo, get a load of me. I’m the next Faulker, Shakespeare and Dickens, all rolled into this fantastic package. Yeah, baby!” The subjectivity of determining talent makes me think of ‘So You Think You Can Dance, Canada?’ When I watch the auditioning dancers, it goes something like this:

Me: “Yeah, this guy rocks. He’s got moves. He’s so in. Look at that energy.”

Then it snaps to the judges and they are pulling at their very expensive hair, and practically yelling, “No! No, no, no. No.”

What is talent and what is sheer hard work? And can you tell when you look at a page?

Of course, if the research doesn’t get you, there are the rejections flying at you. Those can make some dings in your armour. Although, I am pleased to say that I have personally reached a stage where I send a batch, forget about them and assume anything coming in is a rejection. Then I am pleasantly surprised if they request a partial. It’s good for my self-esteem.