The Business of Writing

In the time that has passed since my last blog (too much, probably,) I have continued to submit to agents (almost thirty have received a query plus miscellaneous addenda, as required) and added to my rejection list, making my current total six. The great ratio is only due to my sending most queries just last week. In a month or so, the delta will shrink. I will, of course, continue querying. And will continue to obsess about first impressions (is the letter catchy enough? and how about my first line, paragraph, page, chapter?)

To perfect and improve on the art of catching an agent's eye, a myriad of options are available to the novice writer. Once you are past the 'how to stop procrastinating' and 'creative writing for dummies' workshops and seminars, and your novel is finished and you want to get the baby to market, then this other anxiety begins. At first, I felt this anxiety might affect only the bad beginner. The author manqué, with neither a good story or a good storytelling style. A person like me who needs all the help she can get to stop herself from digressing on the weather in the opening paragraph. No matter how dark and stormy the night really was...

An agent, we are told, may become more favorably inclined to agent us should we come accoutered with a platform. Platform is another word for a following, your own customer base. If you don't have a platform, help comes in the way of "Blog your way to a book deal" (is that what I'm doing?) or "Promote yourself through social media." All of which belies the prior paragraph--query letter could suck and your first line disappoint, but if you can prove that you have thousands of potential buyers, someone will be representing you tout de suite. So now I have a Twitter account (haven't tweeted yet,) post pictures on Instagram and regale my twelve Facebook friends with occasional likes on their posts. I must do better.

In addition, since it is assumed that a great majority of us will not find representation, much less a publisher, the siren song of self publishing keeps pushing us to a land with little time to write, given how much original self-promotion we must generate if we want to obtain any public presence without the backing of a major house, and in the absence of a book review in any of the literary magazines people actually read. Or, for the sake of clarity here, that I have actually heard of.

Add to that all the self-help contributions in the areas of "One hundred ways to make money out of your writing" and the image of the writing life that plays in front of my eyes is one of toil and tribulation. Of hard long hours stretching a marketing muscle I was born without, and complementing my income by practicing an art I have no talent for: teaching, or contributing ditties to ads and technical jargon to the back of smart phone boxes, never forgetting to tweet my latest deep thought. While all the while the 1% in our demographic, the writers agented and published in New York, can claim offhandedly not to have a social presence, to actually dislike a social presence with emeritus disdain.

A few extraordinary authors have mastered the self-publishing, self-promotion world and are making good money. I salute them. I will probably join them. But I will not have the discipline to continually promote sales and keep writing. With me, it will have to be one or the other. Lacking a miraculous development to transform me into mega-selling, blockbuster movie deal authorship, I've come to terms, happily, with the idea of keeping my day job, which I love and provides a good life. And hope for publication and some income from books to expand the good life with the occasional luxury. And to continue to take care of this writing itch I've been scratching for decades.

An itch and scratch I'm happy to share with the four of you who read my blog.