Me and the book and our awkward silences

[mrissa]

So. Here we are. Just me and the book. And me. And, um, the book.

Hi, book.

(The book, as expected, does not answer. It is busy. Books are.)

So. Yah. How 'bout those Twins, book?

(I could not have written a book that cared less about those Twins. Even my other books -- all baseball-free -- would be much better books to sit and watch a baseball game with, although many of them wouldn't get the appeal, being in a different universe from baseball and all.)

See, we're at this awkward stage, the book and me. Half-alpha'ed. (What, does that make it hydrogen'ed, then? Umm. Sorry.) I have a notion of some things that need doing, and some of them are large-scale small things, if that makes any sense: chapters that need an additional two words in the right spot. Or chapters that need to do exactly the same thing very slightly differently.

I am extremely anxious about the book right now, because the people who've read even some of it have liked it, and because I keep hearing that it's not really like other stuff. If they'd hated it, and if it seemed to them that I was doing something trite and derivative and not very interesting, I could remove some of the mental pressure on the book -- with some disappointment, sure, but also with relief: this is not that book, you may move on to a different book now, one that is fresh and shiny and promising, one that lets you write words upon words upon words instead of poking in the right word and then reading another twenty pages and pulling out two more wrong ones and sticking in an expository sentence. One that doesn't require you to actually put it all out there yet again. One that isn't going to be your best, so you might as well not drive yourself nuts over it.

I am perilously close to the point where I have to declare belief in this book and allegiance to it. That is what beta readers mean to me: that I'm standing behind this book going, yes, all right, this is going out as soon as you people have picked at it. This is going to the editor I've had in mind since '02. This is going to be sent out to be rejected and, worse, ignored. Like all the others.

I know what I have to do. I have to keep writing better, revising better, getting better in every direction I can, and I have to keep sending them out. After the first book it gets easier. After the fourth or so it gets harder again, especially if you still believe in the earlier books, still like them, still think they're good stuff and worth your time and worth other people's time, too. It's not even the sting of rejections that's the worst. It's the echoing silence.

It is very, very hard to consign another book to that silence. It is even harder to do so hopefully. It is harder still to do so hopefully and put one's back into making it the absolute best one can do, the best one has ever done with anything important in one's life, just as if one's effort would pay off in something other than personal satisfaction.

It's also the only thing to do, so I'm doing it. Awkward silences and all. I'm starting with the easy bits, the places where an inverted clause isn't clear or a word seems anachronistic. I'm easing in. But I'm doing it, and it's uncomfortable, hard, sometimes miserable work, and the hardest, most miserable and uncomfortable bit is summoning the belief in it all. And it's as necessary as all the rest.

Comments

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

There are virtual hugs. Is there such a thing as a virtual supportive shoulder pat?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It certainly seems like there ought to be.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Then consider your shoulder patted.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

"You're dead right," said Harriet, afer a pause. "If one's genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that's the meaning of the phrase about genius being eternal patience, which I always thought rather absurd. If you truly want a thing, you don't snatch; if you snatch, you don't really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it's a proof of it's importance to you?"

"I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundamental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound."

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (pages 190-191, Harper mass market pb)

I went through all the trouble of typing that out to tell you that every time you post about writing and about the process you go through that it is blazingly clear to me that you are doing what my beloved Miss de Vine would call your proper job.

I look forward to reading the book(s) when it's (they're) published.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thank you the quote and both forms of your vote of confidence. Much appreciated.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Keep breathing.

It's the only advice I know to give.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I imagine that, like most of the other people in my life, you will insist on both in and out?

Humans. So demanding.

[kythiaranos.livejournal.com]

So, so true. I'm still recovering from the book that I loved and couldn't find a home for . . . I admire your courage.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I write fast enough that by the time my first book* had gotten thoroughly (though not, I think, comprehensively) rejected, I had another book sent out in an entirely different category. That has helped. The time scale means that writing fast is both friend and foe.

The time scale is the thing that's so hard for me to get across to my relatives -- even to some wannabe writers. I've heard people say things like, "I'm going to try to sell my book for two years, and if that doesn't work I'll give up and do something else." And I think, "Two years? That's, what, three publishers?" So it becomes clear that some of my friends and relations are thinking back to 2000, when I started sending out this book, and privately wondering how good it really can be; whereas I'm not even done sending it everywhere it could reasonably go. Much less subsequent books.

So saying that you couldn't find a home for a book represents a lot of time and effort, and I'm truly sorry to hear it.

*That is, the first book I was willing to let out into the light of day.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Just remember that Jack London papered the walls of his office with his rejection notices, most if not all by editors left behind by time.

Good entry. It makes me suspect the book will be pretty good, too, if written with the same attention to feeling and perception of complexity.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As I said, it's not the rejections that really bother me. It's the silences. But I'm glad you liked the entry; thanks.