I've had a serious phobia for the past four years, the one thing I am absolutely, positively sure has kept me from getting published. I've had submissionphobia. I have yet to meet an author who had an agent or editor approach them and say "Send me something, anything, please!" It could happen, I guess, but thus far it has not been my experience. I've sent out a query or manuscript here and there and almost got accepted by Shadow Mountain last spring, but I haven't done a big send out for a long time.
I know why I have submissionphobia, but it's silly, really. Last time I sent about 10 queries out and got five responses. Three were form rejections, one was a request for a partial they later rejected, and one was a vicious, personal attack on my writing. Granted, my manuscript needed some work. I was still new at writing and hadn't learned the points of good editing yet, but I didn't think it was bad enough to be "fraught with punctuation and grammatical errors" and that my storyline was "frou-frou". I let it create a paranoia in me that has kept me from submitting but a handfull of times in over four years.
Well, no more. This weekend at LTUE I decided to put my heart into submission. I set myself a goal and I'm going to share it here to keep myself accountable. I decided to send one submission a day through the end of March and I may just continue it beyond that. I'll report here to keep myself accountable.
Where before there was quiet dread whenever I'd drop a manuscript in the mailbox or hit the send key, today I felt nothing but excitement and determination when I sent my first synopsis to Lori Perkins. She was one of those that hadn't responded four years ago but later asked to see a synopsis. Whether she'll want to take a closer look or not, I don't know, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed and am determined to keep trying until I find a home for my stories.
There's a kitty in the mailbox just waiting to surprise someone. I'm hoping they'll want to take her home with them.
Quote of the day: "Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such."
~Samuel Butler
3 comments:
yay! this is great news.
and i think that it's an extremely common thing for writers, for artists, for people in general. it's hard to put ourselves out there for all the rejection the world has to offer... and yet it is the ONLY way we'll eventually be accepted and receive validation for all of our efforts.
xoxo
ps thanks for your sweetness hun. i miss you! and i've been TERRIBLE about blog reading... like since before christmas. yikes!
wow--a month of submitting. that is awesome, Karen. Not only will you be sending out your queries, but you'll force yourself to get out of the 'scared' phase. Hat's off to you, and GOOD luck. The book is awesome.
YAY!!! I'm SOOOO excited you are going for it! I'm so proud of you and can't wait to hear the results.
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