I never thought I’d say this: but I’m glad neither of the novels I’ve written have gotten published. I am glad I wrote them. The feeling of knowing in your mind, yes, ma’am you are indeed capable of writing a novel (which is the one dream you had when you were a girl) is amazing. It is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult things that a person can do and I can say I’ve done it twice. And I pat myself on the back about that regularly. It also makes me confident that even in my darkest days of writer’s block, I know I can one day do it again.
I am additionally glad I found an awesome agent who seems okay with the fact that I don’t currently have a project for her to shop. I am, finally, glad that I got an MFA in Creative Writing, even though there are those who think such things are a waste of time. You can read my opinions on this topic elsewhere, but the bottom line is, that if an institution is willing to pay me to go to school and be creative in exchange for teaching some of their undergraduates and participating in student government and working on a literary journal, then I for one am going to take that challenge. And I did it gladly. (And yes, I do think you can teach someone to write. I guess that’s a topic for another post though.)
But when I read this piece on HTML Giant last week called “Taking No for an Answer,” my instinct was to say, YES. Now, you might be thinking that I am part of the establishment, one of those publishing people who thinks I’m smarter than other people. And for a few hours of every day, I do work in a publishing house (now might be the time to say that my views are my own and belong not to my employers). But I have been on every side of this equation: I have been a girl in a continuing education writing class desperate to have someone say “I liked one line of your story, you are not a moron,” I have been a weirdo striking out to a strange Southern city to study writing, I have been a little fish sending out query letters to literary journals and agents and tracking rejections on spreadsheets. I have been a person trying to get distribution for my tiny literary journal (it’s not so tiny anymore…go team.)
And this is what I will say: time is precious. I am a person who loves to read. But I want to read things that are good. Really good. And good art (and when I say art, I am referring in this case to writing and generally speaking, really anything from a novel you’d buy in a grocery store to a National Book Award winner) is difficult to create. It is especially difficult to create art in a vacuum. The way that things get good is through a process of development, through many drafts on the part of the writer, through input from trusted readers, and, eventually through the help of an agent, editor and copy editor.
I had almost all of these ingredients when I wrote my two novels–drafts, brilliant readers, a great agent, even some really helpful comments from editors who turned the book down. And yet, I still couldn’t get the book to be good enough to publish. So, there is part art, part alchemy, part mystery, part hard work to the whole process that remains to me a bit mystifying (and exciting).
Could I self-publish these novels that I have stored in my closet and on my hard drive? Of course. Might they achieve a modicum of success? Possibly. I know a lot of people who like to read, some of whom have even expressed interest in reading things that I wrote. I know that I could price them low and get people who are cheap and enamored of their new devices to buy them. And yet, just because I wrote them doesn’t mean they need to be read.
Really, I think the HTML Giant writer sums it up quite well:
We live in an age of entitlement. We want therefore we must (and should) have. We are encouraged not to take “no” for an answer. Writing, or publishing really, is primarily an endeavor where we must learn to appreciate rejection or at least accept rejection. As writers we will always hear “no” more than we will hear “yes,” because taste is so subjective, because for many publishers, there are a finite number of books they can publish because they have finite resources, even if they are some of the largest publishers in the world. Persistence is an important quality in a writer. Some of my greatest writing successes have come from being persistent in the face of constant rejection. And yet, I wonder if there comes a point when we should take no for an answer, when we should use rejection to reassess why we keep meeting with rejection. At what point does faith become foolish or even delusional?
I think there is value to filters. Think about your local diner: it has pages and pages of its menu. You can order the filet of sole, the lobster bisque, steak tartar (maybe?). But all you ever get is a burger. Or maybe a salad. There’s no way that one restaurant can be good at all of the things on all of those pages. And it is the same with books. I want the condensed menu, not every option. Every option is not good for me.
I should say that HTML Giant has published a kind of rebuttal to the piece that I am agreeing with called “Self Publishing Isn’t My Worst Mistake” which brings up valid points, but I’m sticking with my original thesis. And now I will go back to working on the project that maybe one day will be good enough to publish. But I won’t know until I try.
