Preemptive Retaliation

I have now written consecutively for over one hundred days straight. A new record for me! It doesn’t come close to the one thousand day streak I managed on Duolingo (agus chan eil cuimhne agam air) but we all have to start somewhere.

My writing topics have bounced back and forth a bit. I spent a solid chunk of those hundred days redrafting The Making Of and going through the arduous process of creating an elevator pitch/synopsis/combination of words that will make it into a Sellable Item. Unsurprisingly this is a mentally exhausting activity, as I stare at my novel and wonder is it really that interesting? Will people really want to read it? And of course the answer is YES on both accounts, but when I’ve been working and reworking on something for so long it’s hard to see the woods for the trees.

This is amplified somewhat by reading Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang, and its cutthroat depiction of the publishing industry – how difficult it is to break into the scene, and how much more difficult it is to break even. But hey ho, need to keep trying to achieve the dream.

(on a side note, I was away in Madeira on holiday last week and wanted to save Yellowface as sunny summer pool reading but due to giving up on an absolutely terrible book the week before I picked it up just to experience good writing again, and I couldn’t put it down for forty pages, which culminated in me finishing it as the plane was hitting the tarmac at Funchal airport – a whirlwind read that left me super uncomfortable and kinda angry)

So after polishing everything and making my pitch work… I’ve started submitting my work to agents. So that’s a scary new thing I’m dealing with.

Every once in a while I leave a voicenote to my writer friend Thomas, and I bemoan the state of the industry. I whinge that it’s so tough out there, that you don’t have to be a good writer anymore, just a social media manipulator that appeals to the algorithm enough to slot yourself in front of bored eyes. This isn’t a new game – I remember reading old Blogger sites that garnered enough views to secure a book deal and I looked on with such envy. Why them and not me? In retrospect it’s obvious but the moan continues, and I guess I like to moan more than I like doing something about it.

I think this stems from a deep seated need to stay quiet, to stay out the way – a deep seated need to stay seated. In my normal life I had an end of year review, where I’m supposed to celebrate my successes, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember half of them, and the half I could I thought spoke for themselves. I guess that’s what I keep hoping for, that my work will speak for itself and that people will appreciate it on its own merit. But that’s not the case.

In my voicenotes, I wish differently. In a recent one I punctuated my thoughts with frustrated yells (though subdued, to prevent me waking my kids). Why can’t I just write something and have it there? Why can’t I just create and have that creation ready for people to appreciate? (and also, importantly but never said, be paid for this creativity)

But that’s not how this game works, so onward I go.