Mark Terry

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Stick Me In A Clothes Dryer And Spin Me, Baby


May 15, 2008
Sounds sort of like a country song.

I'll confess my first thought for a blog post this morning was to write about wanting to give up writing fiction completely, how I was one too many rejections over my limit, that I was busy and frustrated and really, shouldn't I just show some common sense?

Then I sat down and worked on my wip for an hour.

Then I got ONE MORE REJECTION from my agent, to which I responded: "I don't think I can stand any more good news this week."

Really, hold onto them until next week, okay? I'm annoyed.

I had a conference call about some NF work that went really well and I'm very excited about it. Things are just going great in the writing business area (knock wood), although from the fiction/novel/film option end of things I might as well shoot myself in the head. It increasingly starts to feel like a total freakin' waste of time and energy!

Which goes a long ways toward saying, If you're unpublished and you get totally fed up ("I am just sick and tired...") with doing body-slams on the steel doors of publishing's castle, well, friends, you ain't alone. If you wonder if you shouldn't just throw in the towel and take up macrame, you ain't alone.

So do what I do, not what I say.

Sit your ass down and write anyway.

Cheers,
Mark Terry

14 Comments:

Blogger Aimless Writer said...

I'm so there! Thinking of going back to just writing the stories for me and forget about the submission process. Sometimes I think I just need a break from it all.

12:22 PM  
Blogger Jess Melton said...

I am pretty new to this industry so don't have a lot of professional input, but I have been doing a bit of research and probably the best post I have read lately about publication is from Lit Soup last tuesday.

In the post she goes off the 'don't worry, be happy' bandwagon and says that she feels the publishing world is in a recession. Out of everything she said, the point that struck me most was the following: "watch the publishing industry hype its newest published books, and we know that those books sold about two years ago."

To me that means that until the economy changes I have a snowball's chance in hell of getting my novel purchased let alone published. So I maintain my day job, work on finishing my BA in business, and write my novel during my copius amounts of free time (read sarcasm on the free time part).

3:16 PM  
Blogger Mark Terry said...

Jess,
Well, I'd suggest you keep your day job anyway, because most novels don't make much money.

But, I would also agree that we're seeing a recession of sorts hitting publishing. I get a couple newsletters, Shelf Awareness, and Publishers Lunch, and there have been a lot of stories lately about publishers laying off staff and cutting back on number of books being published. I would argue, in your case, though, that what they're doing more of is betting on their top sellers, looking for new books to gamble on and trimming their midlist...

That's been the trend in publishing for 20 or 30 years anyway (or longer).

3:25 PM  
Blogger spyscribbler said...

Maybe the publishing industry is going through growing pains to something better. Maybe you'll be in awesome position for, like, someone buying five books because you've been typing away while they've been mosying along.

Or maybe next week your agent will call with good news.

I've got my fingers crossed for you!

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