Monday, September 28, 2009

Written in Blood


I am keen to the idea that I'm a writer. I write, so doesn't that make me a writer? I'd love to be a published author. That is something I cannot say I am. This fact doesn't come to me for a lack of trying. Believe me, I have tried. I thought it just took writing that one amazing story that would get your foot into the door. Well, I wrote that story, a vampire story if you haven't already guessed called "Dying to be Dead". I'm actually still half-heartedly writing a sequel to this first novel.



I completed my novel and I had no idea what to do next. So I got online and I looked through the websites of some of the literary agents that I found listed in a book called "The Writer's Market". Some of these lit agents had an electronic submission form. I sent my first 50 pages to one. Two days later they dropped a bomb on me with one of their automatic Dear John letters that said I wasn't something they were interested in at this time...but hey..Keep on writing! I felt like someone jumped up and down on my chest with a pair of size 15 Birkenstocks. I was disenchanted to say the least.



Although, I didn't want to accept that I was out of the game just yet. So a couple of months later, (yes, it took me 2 months to work up the courage again to submit to another lit agent), I got online again and found another agent and this one had an electronic query form. I read a little bit about doing queries in my writing handbook. I was flimsy on the whole idea at best. I built up a synopsis for my story the best that I could, all the while knowing it was robbing my story to try and place it in a little box of 200 words or less. I did it, though. I submitted, and they took over two long weeks to get back to me with the same lame, generic letter as the previous rejecting lit agent. Do these guys meet up for lunch and share their material or what?



Feeling rejected, humiliated, and just plain beaten down...I gave up for a while. I still have that spark in me that tells me to write everyday. I work for an article content site that allows me to get paid for writing. Yeah, its lame-ass web content no-brainer articles, but at least I write everyday. So my manuscripts sit there collecting dust while I watch this cycle of teen vampire stories explode just about everywhere you look. Maybe it's just a case of vampire overload. Maybe I'll ride it out...I don't know. All I know is that these suits might be able to keep me from being a published author, but I'll always be a writer.

2 comments:

  1. You can't just give up after two or three times. There are too many people out there of too varied tastes. Just because two people out of two billion didn't see things the way you do you can't let that stop you. I can't come up with original thoughts past poetry and essays. I've even tried going back and changing the names and stuff on my fan fics but it doesn't quite work as well and I don't have the patience to go in and build it up.

    You go into a Barnes and Noble and LOOK at ALL those books. If there is a place for each of those authors, there is a place for you too.

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  2. Mark my words, It will happen my dear.

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