My Writing

I wouldn’t be doing myself any favours if I didn’t give you the background to my world of writing and rejection. For what it’s worth, if you think you’d love to be a writer, ask yourself one question; Can you put your heart, soul and life into a book you think is magical, package it off to numerous strangers, and deal with the 99% likelihood that you’ll fail? And for the record, 99% is probably a good odd. One agent told me he sees about 30 manuscripts a week and takes on 3-4 writers per year. Do the math. It’s more like 99.8% fail; 2 in 1000 make it. And even then it’s still subjective; terrible books get published, and good writers fall by the wayside. Out there in the literary ether there’s a graveyard of lost hope, where every cross is a pair of bic pen’s taped together. You buy your plot in that hell when you submit your first piece of work. And I’ve got one foot firmly in that grave. But luckily for me, I type with my hands, so for now, I’m safe.

In the early 2000’s, I was convinced I could focus my efforts to write a book. So, I set a goal to write one before I turned 30. By that age, I had written two full-length stories, both supernatural thrillers. Neither were published, and to be honest, neither were good enough. In my defence, I only submitted one manuscript and even then, only to four publishers. But I knew I had the drive to commit months/years of work to a zero-reward outcome. One of those stories has since been lost, discarded on misplaced hard-drives.

In 2016, I started writing again, deciding I was going to be an author of considerable renown. I put great effort into penning my first book and submitted it with great success abject failure. Disappointed, but not put off, I wrote another. Yet again, my talent shone through I failed. And again. And again. To date, I’ve submitted four full-length manuscripts (4 years of work) and received more rejections than I care to count, _^*cough* about 150+. But I’m still writing (mostly fantasy), and it’s not tatty nonsense. I have cerebral ideas, removed from fantasy pulp-fiction and crappy stereotyping. I asked an agent (post-submission critique) if I was wasting my time, but they did encourage me, ‘better than OK’, they said. I’ll take that as a ‘good’.

So, I know I’ll make it one day. Just got to keep marching on.