Oh, But It's Hard

Don't get excited. I don't write erotica. I'm a blusher.

It would be an understatement to say I've been at this "becoming published" thing for a while. It's been a loooong while. To be fair, I didn't start querying until three weeks ago, but a lot of life and years went into preparing to send out that first query.

For instance, I had to get glasses. I stand firm by my claim I was born with perfect eyesight and I have sacrificed it to four novels. Two of which live in a cozy corner of my computer and will likely never see the light of day. The third one is salvageable. The fourth one, I heart.

Back to those first two. Yeah, they'll never be read by another living person. Because they ain't great. I'm very grateful kids aren't like books; that our first effort offspring doesn't suck as much as our first effort novel. If they improved apace with novels, I'd need to pop out at least three before I felt comfortable taking the kid into public. Only the fourth one would be appropriate for polite society.

In all the preparing that went into actually writing a novel I felt confident enough to send out into the world, I did plenty of research. My Google history could only belong to a literary agent groupie or an aspiring author. I read plenty about how hard it is to get published.

I did not get, however, how haaaaarrrrrdddd it is to get published.

I mean, I knew I'd get rejections. Of course, I would get some rejections. I get insanely excited every time I get a request for my novel. It's amazing, just as I imagined it would be.

So it's not that I went into this thing blind. I had realistic expectations. What I couldn't foresee was how it would feel. That's the hard part. Knowing rejections were coming doesn't make them suck any less. And they sssuuuuccckkk.

No matter how much I try to apply logic, remember that it's ridiculous to believe every agent has the same taste (otherwise, the market would be really boring) I get my feelings third-grade level hurt. Like when you were on the playground and you might not be invited into the club du jour and it would just about rip your little heart out...

That happened to other people, right? Not just me? Eh, don't tell me if I'm alone in this. I don't need that on top of the other stuff. I don't want to climb back under the monkey bars and make up games for myself. It's dusty under there.

I'm trying to develop a really thick skin. I'm looking for my inner blase.

I'd prefer to skip all that "growth" crap and just get an offer of representation. Is there a box I can check for that, please?