Humans are selfish by nature, and we tend to rationalize the world around us in terms of our own existence.
How are we affected? How did this happen? Nine times out of ten, most people find themselves on the wrong rung of a self accountability ladder. “It wasn’t me.” “I did everything I could.” “I don’t understand.”
"The ultimate aim of the ego is not to see something, but to be something."
- Muhammad Iqbal.
How much, or how little, did our own behavior catalyze our current situation? The answer, when it comes to writing, is one hundred percent.
Some of you have already stiffened your spines, and inflated your chests in absolute indignation. “How dare you!” you mutter, grasping your favorite ice cream flavor in lieu of a security blanket.
There are many shades of ego, but the ego of the author can be the darkest.
As expectations can become the graveyard of broken dreams,
so too can the ego stand in the way of our success.
For those of you already in possession of an agent, and on your way to publication, you are doing something right. Something that the rest of us are trying to figure out.
I know, now your eyebrows resemble those infamous fast food arches. I’m not ‘agented’. I’m not published. So what would I know about writing?
Like eighty percent of Americans, I too cultivated the novel idea that I could – well – become a novelist. So I did it. With one creative writing class under my belt, and a love of English Literature, I wrote a book.
One huge, gigantic, book just shy of half a million words
(budding authors everywhere have simultaneously sprayed coffee all over themselves).
I had no idea what I was doing. In my mind, there was no way that I would ever complete the book, so I just kept on going.
Years of stealing an hour here, and an hour there. Of getting up at 4am to get in five hours of quality book time before going to my regular nine to five. Ego wasn’t driving me then. Ambition was.
And I did it. I finished. It was good. My hopes rose. My beta readers were in love, and my entire being swelled with pride…until I ‘Googled’ the words ‘word count’.
Debut novels should typically fall between 60,000 – 90,000 words depending on the genre. Shocked didn’t even begin to cover my reaction. My book was almost five times that length!
Another search led to the discovery that my masterpiece was ten – yes, ten – words longer than the entire Lord Of The Rings Trilogy. Including appendices. Crap!
So I did what any other novice would have done – I picked a cliffhanger chapter, slapped an epilogue at the end, and went about my merry way as I queried the literary world…and in my head, they were welcome.
This is a public service announcement – do not, under any circumstances, do what I did!
I don’t want to say that I wasted large portions of my life…but I didn’t do the research before I started. I didn’t know how difficult it was going to be to break into the literary industry. Anyone that’s read the one with the red room of pain has said to themselves: I can do better than this!
But I discovered something. It’s true what they say: writing a book is easy. If it wasn’t, then literary agents would get back to you within hours instead of weeks – they have a ton of queries to get through.
Anyone can write (I can hear your indignant guffaws from here!), but not everyone can truly craft a novel.
I had no luck getting published with that beast of a book. Chopping it up did nothing for it, even as I realized that I needed to start over from the end of the first book (that really, really, hurt my soul), and re-wrote, and revised, over and over. No success.
I should have shelved it then. It would always wait for me, but I couldn't wait for it.
