For some reason, I found myself looking back. Just looking back, not chasing anything. Just looking back. Everywhere. Probably, my looking forward in time to the end of January caused my brain to do an about-turn!
You know, the one thing I miss the most is forums! Ha! You'd think I'd have had enough of them by now, but nope - even though I feel I can't go back to them, I do kind of wish I could post my latest work and have a stack of guys offering their opinions on it. I never seemed to fail to cause some kind of worthwhile discussion on my stuff, so I probably can claim to have an element of 'thinkability' buried inside my words of wonder! Might have been an illusion, so I won't push that one...
Only, I know my forum days are over - hell, I even helped kill 'em off! (My 'to thine own self be true' motto can get me into awful bother sometimes, though I can also claim to mean well, where some would probably say that I'm more like 'well mean'! lol)
I do ask myself, though, what's the point of doing all that stuff, getting involved, getting involved in discussions, arguments, other people's works, if it all isn't meant to help you stand on your own two feet? The whole point of it all is to get you to think all of the things that need to be thought, without anyone else having to prompt you. Or at least, you should try to. And it 's not like you actually do it all alone, as you meet people along the way who offer so much in the way of help and advice, and most of all friendship. The links on my blog show that. You can't have enough friends in life. Never forget that.
I guess what I'm really asking is 'If you pick up a guitar and strum a few chords, does it make you a musician?'
If you write a book, but go unpublished, are you a writer? Who will know that you are? Yourself? Great, but the memory of it will die when you do.
This isn't negativity I'm spouting here - the opposite, rather. I'm telling myself that sending off to agents is no proof of ability - authenticity, yes, if I've done all that I can. But it's no consolation if the reply is 'no', however well-put or well-mannered it is. I've had a few of those, you know: praise with a negative ending! Sends your head into meltdown, I can tell you.
So, January it is. I've said that. But I have to mean it. Only my best will do.
'You've set yourself a mammoth task, Peter,' Noel said. He's dead right, too.
I have to prove I'm up to it. I have to prove it before January. Not to myself. I will always call myself a writer. And so I am. But if I don't prove it by getting published, then the question will always be 'So am I?'
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2 comments:
Hey Esy,
This might give you something to think about:
I was contacted by a company called discovered authors (I have a vague recollection of approaching them for info a couple of years back).
After two friendly phone calls, they sent me a brochure of sorts.
You can pay up to two grand to have them publish you.
Anyone can do it (provided you have the dosh).
Anyhoo, the brochure is riddled with spelling mistakes and peculiar grammar, and became a piece of scrap paper upon which my son and I designed jack o'lanterns.
Check 'em out:
http://www.discoveredauthors.co.uk/welcome.html
And you know they're not alone.
So one has to ask, what does it mean to be published?
What does it mean if I give someone two grand to take anything I choose to throw at them and then have my work on bookshelves?
Food for thought eh :o)
Well, solvey, it certainly is food for thought. However, self-publishing, or even vanity publishing, doesn't cut it for me. I've looked down that route, and I'm glad it didn't work out. And I know it doesn't cut it for you, either. We both need to be judged without the falsehood of our own guarantee. We would publish ourselves if we were publishers! And that's what it boils down to. The decision to write is ours; the decision to publish commercially must belong to someone else. The traditional route. One day the internet may change the publishing world as it has done the music world. Until then, it's the traditional route. The most painful route...
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