Skip to main content

Honesty

So I've done enough whining.

I saw a low-level MMA fight once where the fight ended just because one of the guys got tired of getting hit.  It wasn't a ref stoppage, he wasn't being submitted, in fact, he was still on his feet.  He had taken a few shots to the face and decided that maybe fighting wasn't for him, and he quit.  I remember saying to the guys I was with that if you can't take getting punched in the face, maybe you should take up a different sport.  Maybe checkers, or golf, or tennis, where you rarely get attacked by opponents.

I know that I will be rejected.  I know that this will not be the last time that someone isn't scooping what I am pooping, so to speak.  After the thing gets picked up by an agent, I will still have to endure the hope and disappointment when they are trying to sell it to a publisher.  After that, people will (hopefully) read it.  They will for whatever reason, feel compelled to get on Twitter and call me a moron or a monster, they will review it and describe everything that is wrong with it.  Maybe I will do a signing and nobody will show up except for a couple of homeless guys that just want the free coffee.  Unless I'm ready to take up golf or tennis, I'd better be able to take a punch, right?  Right.

But that doesn't change the fact that it hurts.  It hurts to get punched in the face, it hurts to get rejected.  I see no reason to try and hide that.  If I set out to try and capture the journey of having a completed manuscript and attempting to get it published, then I have nothing to gain by not recording my disappointment and self-doubt as well as my hope and triumph.  I am proud of what I have done.  It was hard, and sometimes painful and I did it.  I finished a novel. Now I'm being told that it doesn't fit anywhere, they want YA dystopian vampire novels to sell to 13 year old girls to go with their One Direction albums.

That is unfair.  It's not that bad; nobody has asked for my soul.  Yet.

I love writing.  I do it well.  I can't run very fast, I have no idea how to change the oil in my car, and the last time I tried to dance in public somebody called an ambulance because they were sure I was having a grand mal, but dammit, I'm good at this.  I don't know why, or how it happened, but this is what I have.  People read my stuff and they generally like it.  The book is good.  The new book I am writing right now has a chance to be great.  I am blessed with talent and determination and am surrounded by supportive and patient and loving people. 

Forgive my indulgence in self pity and doubt, but if there were a writer working on their first novel and they somehow stumbled across this, I would want them to know to expect to get punched in the face, I would want them to know that it will hurt, and I would want them to know that they should keep on going, they should not listen to that bastard voice whispering poison and lies.  I would want them to know that I will be honest here, that I am genuinely exposing my wounds so nobody goes into this blind.  You get hit, you get cut and you bleed and you cry and you fall down.  And that's fine.

As long as you remember to get back up, shake it off, and keep moving forward.  

So I'm done whining.  For now.  Until the next rejection, at least.

Cheers.  RP



     


Comments

  1. I wonder what it's like to be a painter. To have a painting on a wall and people saying that it looks like shit. Is the world full of artist in hurtting and in pain. I'm not saying that your pain is not real but saying there must be a lot of people out there in pain.

    ReplyDelete
  2. All things in perspective, of course you are right. There are people out there in genuine pain, untreatable pain, intractable pain. I'm relatively healthy and happy and safe. It's just hard to keep that perspective sometimes when you have put so much of yourself into something.

    Also I'm a big crybaby when things don't go my way. But thats OK too, I guess. I started writing this thing to chronicle what it was like to try and get a first novel published, and I think if I want to be honest (and I do), I also have to record my crybabyhood.

    It's just hard to keep perspective sometimes.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fighting for Clarity

There's this to be said about fighting: while you're doing it, you don't have room in your head for anything else, not your busted ass car or your worries about your family, not the leak under your bathroom sink, or how you're going to pay your bills.  There's only breathe one two, step out of range, shift off the center line, move breathe one three two slip the jab level change three to the body check the low kick counter one two...  it is a better escape than most, and I've tried most of them, believe me. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I get humbled and beat up at every session, I don't understand why I even go. I'm feeling defeated; everything is so fucking hard for me, and I don't know why I'm doing it. I should just quit, right? Fuck you.  I'll show you motherfuckers what I am capable of. I'll show you-  And then I go and I try and my knees give and I get pummeled and twisted and what the fuck man how humble do I

End/Beginning of the Year House Cleaning

So its been a while huh?  Usually if I spend a long time away from writing, it is because I am either feeling pretty content, or because I have been busy. In this case it is both. I have been busy, both with the holidays and related events, and with the pay job, and also I have been working on a super secret surprise mystery project that I am not quite ready to talk about, but it is cool as hell and I'm stoked to bring it out and wave it around and harass my family and friends to tell me what they think and to tell everyone that they have ever met to check it out. But that is later. It is 2018, folks. Twenty. Eighteen. Since I am so behind in everything, I figured I would just blob everything together in one big-ass beginning of the year/end of the year rant/review/announcement pile of words and see where it goes.  Let's just jump in shall we? --  Unbelievable, but I'm turning forty years old in August, an age that I wasn't sure I was ever going to see, and one that I

#FFF

So as many of you must know, November is National Novel Writing Month and writers everywhere get all wound up and try to knock out a novel in a month.  It is abbreviated as NaNoWriMo or something stupid, presumably an event created by and intended for writers and that's the best thing that they could come up with?  The world's most garbage portmanteau?  Writing circles generally call it Nano, which is only marginally better, but at least its shorter.  I never do it because November is a terrible month to attempt to do anything other than watch football and dream of turkey and mashed potatoes and whatnot.  Who has time to sit down at the keys in November? I don't know about y'all, but I haven't been able to do jack shit creatively in the last year, what with the pandemic and the election and protests and civil unrest and the many and varied other goddamn attacks on my peace and sanity and holy shit it was all I could do to hold it together and not run screaming out o