Well, it's the last weekend of 08, so I'll go ahead and do my goodbye and good riddance.
It's been a year of extremes for me. Both in terms of the roller coaster ride and the fact that one aspect of my life is really, really good and I have to do my best to keep that in perspective as the other aspect completely falls to shit.
Professionally, I started 08 with a book I was really proud of that had a release date of summer 09. I had high hopes that I'd sell an adult manuscript this year, since I'd garnered some attention within adult circles with my young adult novels.
However, the reality was that I got caught in a massive web of miscommunication that came from having an extremely baby editor. An agent who wasn't assertive enough for me to get the answers I needed on several fronts, including communications with other editors with whom there might have been some hope for the adult manuscripts. And then communication with her fell through as well, with her putting me off whenever I tried to ask about different tactics or approaches. And when I tried to ask about my adult manuscripts, she kept putting me off with "Well, after we sell your next YA, which gave me the uncomfortable feeling that she a) was slotting me in her mind as her designated YA author and/or b) thought there was little to no hope for me to sell an adult manuscript any time in the near future.
Given that I literally couldn't sell a young adult manuscript until after the one in progress was accepted by the publisher, the fact that she kept putting me off on the adult work with that excuse felt like a brush off of the worst sort and began chipping away at my confidence. After she refused to submit or even look at a romance partial I was working on, claiming that she'd want me to write the whole manuscript before she'd submit it, that kind of put the nail in the coffin.
By May, I was sans agent (after a bitter breakup where she told me that editors were saying I was difficult to work with-- utter bullshit, but still hurtful) and beginning that search again, taking more hits to my confidence as I received a lot of "you're a wonderful writer, but..." rejections. By July, I signed with Agent Kate, who's wonderful, but the other shoe was about to drop. After sixteen months, four revisions, and many "I LOVE it" emails from my baby editor and her immediate supervising editor, the publisher decided that the manuscript wasn't to her satisfaction and they were pushing me off the summer 09 schedule. At this point, it was going to go from 23 months between releases (a lifetime in publishing unless you're Stephen King) to who knows how long. However, both Agent Kate and I suspected there was more to it than that and that they were merely buying time.
By September, they'd canceled my contract outright and for the most part, I'd gone since May without writing.
I began 08 as a published, award-winning author and I end it essentially unpublished, having to start over in a market that's tighter and if not more discriminating, more cautious, than ever before. My young adult novels will count for very little since so much time has elapsed and in terms of adult fiction, I blur so many lines, it's going to take nothing short of an act of some deity (or plural) to make it happen. Because in publishing, talent counts for squat. My confidence is shot, I'm not sure I should even think about publishing in the immediate sense.
However-- all that said. Personally, my life is as good as I could hope it to be. I have, in my husband, the best person. He's supportive, he's funny, he does his best to keep me grounded, yet at the same time allows me the time and space to rage at the heavens. He understands (after a few years of, "publishing can't possibly that stupid") that publishing really IS that stupid. If I quit publishing tomorrow, he'd support me, but if I tried to quit writing, he'd just laugh. He understands I can't quit that.
I've got two kids who are incredibly bright, funny, independent, and miraculously, are still actual (continued...)