As an aspiring writer, I’ve had to creep out of my comfort zone now and then. First I had to share my writing with other people. That’s terrifying. Even the kindest readers, who are most inclined to praise your work, are still people outside of your own head where the writing first took shape. Who knows whether the words will even make sense to anyone else? Some of my hardest critiques have come from family members, not because they were particularly eviscerating, but simply because they were my first encounters with a perspective other than my own.
I was extremely fortunate to marry a fellow writer, who provides emotional and practical support in so many ways. He was the one who encouraged me to take a creative writing class in college. That was doubly terrifying. I would have readers who were themselves writers, and who had no particular motivation to be kind to me. And what about the teacher? What if she disliked “genre” fiction and was therefore already disinclined to see value in anything I wrote? And what if my writing style was completely torn to shreds during the workshopping sessions? What I had nothing useful to contribute to other writers? I gulped down all these what-ifs and took the class anyway. Once again I was lucky. The teacher was open to any and all genres, and all my classmates were thoughtful but kind with their critiques. It was a much-valued experience.
When I finished my first novel, I had to take the biggest step of all: out of comfortable hypotheticals and into the reality of querying. I could imagine being published all I liked, but until I started submitting, nothing would actually happen. The downside: as long as I didn’t submit, I wouldn’t get any rejections. From my very first submission, the rejections came fast and furious. I’m quite aware now that my early manuscripts were not good enough to get published, so I can regard the disappointment with a little more equanimity, but at the time it was devastating. I would go through periods of timid but hopeful submissions, then longer periods of gloom and despair and “oh, why even bother?”
Why did I bother, after all? Sharing my work with friendly readers and supportive classmates turned out to be largely positive experiences, well worth that initial fear and discomfort of stretching myself. Submitting manuscripts, on the other hand, did not produce any sort of net positive at first. Except…experience. Opportunity. Hah. That term sometimes serves as a sort of euphemism for something that makes us miserable, but at least we can learn from it. And I have absolutely learned from my misery. Mostly, how to be thick-skinned, dust myself off and start over with undiminished optimism. It’s taken a long time to learn that, let me tell you. I sent out my very first submission in 2008. That’s practically before social media existed. To add to my elderly status — are you old enough to remember when blogs were omnipresent? My first two requests for manuscripts came through contests on a writers’ blog that I participated in.
And oh, how I needed that encouragement! Even though the agents ultimately passed on those books, I considered it significant progress in my journey. Someone liked my first pages; they saw potential in them. I wasn’t a complete fraud as a writer. I took that tiny particle of hope and clung to it fervently. And kept trying, and improving my craft, and trying again. In the intervening years I would get, maybe, one request out of twenty queries sent. That’s not a bad statistic, all things considered. And recently that percentage has risen ever so slightly. It’s only taken me 16 years and 20+ books…
Still, it’s all experience. Opportunity. That’s why, when I came across an ad for a writer’s conference that was actually affordable for our family’s limited budget, with online options so I wouldn’t need to travel, I decided to attempt another leap out of my comfort zone. I signed up for pitch sessions with two agents. One-on-one, face-to-face (screen-to-screen anyway), with a chance to learn what works with my novel. And what doesn’t. Am I anxious and imagining all sorts of worst-case scenarios? Absolutely. I’m going ahead anyway. Maybe my pitch will dazzle someone. Maybe it won’t. Either way, I’ll get valuable feedback and make actual connections with people in the industry. I’ve even put in my first page for an anonymous “writers’ got talent” contest, which could very well end up with my beloved book figuratively torn into shreds. And yet. Experience. Opportunity.
Here we go.
cynthiaailshie 