Susan, it sounds like your rejection letters are pretty encouraging, actually! I'm so excited for you. I mean, you wrote a book! And it's THERE for people to reject!

Yeah, I'm not at all discouraged yet. I'll get there, if not with this book, with the one after it or the one after that.

At the conference in October, among the speakers two stand out in my mind--Julia Quinn and a category author (i.e. Harlequin/Silhouette) whose name I don't recall offhand. JQ published her first novel. The other writer submitted something along the lines of 20 manuscripts over 18 years before she actually got published. I figure I'll be somewhere in between, though I'm still cocky enough that I expect to be much closer to the Quinn side of the continuum.

Victor, I left a comment on LJ, too. Really liked it.

I'd started getting "nice" rejections too... then I wasn't able to write for a while. Bet I'm back to form letters now.

Victor, I really liked the way you wrote that. I think part of my problem (as in, the reason why I'm doing newsletter stuff I hate instead of taking a chance and writing stuff that doesn't numb my brain) is the whole fear of failure thing. It's good for me to remember that to write is to fail.

Susan, that sounds like a very encouraging rejection indeed.

I remember reading one of Tabitha King's books once and suspecting her technical chops were much better than those of the hubby, but it's been a while, and that's all I really remember about it.

I dimly remember reading that she helped him a lot with the structure and female voices in Carrie. So in a way, he owes his career to her.

I think part of my problem (as in, the reason why I'm doing newsletter stuff I hate instead of taking a chance and writing stuff that doesn't numb my brain) is the whole fear of failure thing. It's good for me to remember that to write is to fail.

EXACTLY!!!!! Fear of failure can be SUCH an inhibitor.

I think the question writers need to ask themselves is, "OK. If I fail, so what?" Why is that such a horrible thing?

Failure is bullshit anyway - it's just part of the natural cycle of breathing and not breathing. There's no getting around it; might as well embrace it. Failure (however you define it) happens. Success (ditto) happens. All of it feeds the individual toward critical mass.

Plei! Wanna see! And a suggestion? Ask Pete if he will be a nice nice nice man and show you an astonishing piece he did; tell him, it's the thing with the lady and the tree. Quite, well, very, um, amazing and intense.

Here's a link, from a friend in my writers group. I reproduce both email as explanation, and a link (I'm not eligible, as you'll see):

There's a writing competition being sponsored by London Book Fair that I am entering and thought others may be interested in. Send in the first 10,000 words of a novel by Jan 23. The winner gets a ton of exposure (Brits as well as non Brits may enter). Those submitting can not have been previously published (sorry Deborah).

Here's the link:

[link]

Plei! Wanna see! And a suggestion? Ask Pete if he will be a nice nice nice man and show you an astonishing piece he did; tell him, it's the thing with the lady and the tree. Quite, well, very, um, amazing and intense.

Ooo! I will ask him.

I'll be insending in a page or two (when a page or two more is written, that is) for you to look at.

I'll be insending in a page or two (when a page or two more is written, that is) for you to look at.

(bouncebouncebouncebouncebouncebouncebounce)

I think part of my problem (as in, the reason why I'm doing newsletter stuff I hate instead of taking a chance and writing stuff that doesn't numb my brain) is the whole fear of failure thing. It's good for me to remember that to write is to fail.

When I started Lucy, it'd been four years since I wrote fiction. I have stacks of unfinished novels from my teens, and the beginnings of a fantasy epic from my 20's. (The teenaged stuff is decently well-written, but it's utter crap. Mary Sues galore. The fantasy epic is quite good, if I do say so myself, but my worldview has changed so much in the 7 years since I've worked on it that I doubt I'll ever go back to it, though I might find a way to use some of the cultures and characters I developed.)

Anyway, I'd given up on ever thinking of myself as a writer. But one of the things that changed my mind was deciding that if by the time I die I've never published a novel, I'd rather it be because I tried and failed than because I never completed one. So I wrote again.

Ooo! I will ask him.

Suuuuuuure. The next time you're by. Not something I can mail to you, ya see.

'allo, Pete.

I asked Nic if he was up for a nice game of Scrabble. He left the room with more haste than was strictly necessary.