Into The Great Unknown

Writing is a lot like gambling; if you play at it long enough you might just get lucky. That is what I tell myself every time I write a query, develop a proposal or send a completed manuscript out into the great unknown. It's hard to send your work out there. I mean, it's your work and in a great many ways, it is part of you. A representative of your creative self. An extension of yourself through the interpretation of your art. You baby it, fight with it, love it, hate it... and after you've picked apart all of its weaknesses, toyed with it, tweaked it and polished it - then you love it again. And after all of that, you diligently research possible markets for your work, your baby, and dutifully send it off to vie for publication and you wait.

And wait. And... well, you wait some more. You tell yourself that no news is good news. Your friends say things like, "Well, at least it hasn't been rejected"reminding you that rejection is the most probable outcome and it is only a matter of time before the rejection notices start pouring in. After all, it is the most probable outcome.

Suffice to say that landing an acceptance from a traditional publisher is a long shot, even if your work is excellent. Which is a good part of the reason so many writers have opted to self publish via Print on Demand companies. But even that isn't quite so simple and often P.O.D. contracts saddle the writer with the burden of high fees with very few, if any benefits.

Publication is the side of writing that is absolutely the most frustrating. Everything must be perfect if the writer hopes to attract the attention of an editor. Queries must light the fire of interest without being too long, or too wordy. It has to be perfect.

So you wait and as you wait you start to wonder if you did a good enough job. You start to doubt. And if, or rather when rejections roll in - you start to doubt your work. You pick apart the possible reasons why your query wasn't effective. You rewrite it. Edit it. Polish it and send it out into the great unknown again.

The fact is, you have to have a thick skin in this business. Critiques can be harsh, editors are usually quite demanding and rejections can sometimes be hard to swallow. But it is the way it is, and knowing that, the writer writes some more and dutifully sends their work, their baby, out into the great unknown hoping this time they'll hit the publishing jackpot - their name in print and a check with their name on it for their efforts.