I will gain a great deal of pleasure, joy, even in your submission.

The more you submit, the greater my joy – it’s a very simple equation.

Oh how I laughed! The above quote came from Fifty Shades of Grey - see how kindly I've put a link to it, should you want to purchase it.

I'd planned to write this blog about submitting my work to publishers. In the very act of putting in the Google search 'submission quotes,' I realised that perhaps there was a fundamental error in my thought process...

IF ONLY the publishers (or even just ONE!) felt the same about my submission - that it gave them a great deal of pleasure, joy, even, and that the more I submitted, the greater their joy.

SO - I've lost all those silly disempowering thoughts and am submitting like there's no tomorrow.

Not even blanching too much when I read a post on Shooting People called Submission Insanity

At least I don't resort to things like THIS:

 

"I got a cover letter in the form of a jigsaw puzzle, where I had to piece it together. I put together the first couple of pieces and said, 'I can't believe I'm wasting my time on this.' So I didn't." - Shawna McCarthy

OR 

"...send in a fantasy manuscript on pink paper with pictures of unicorns and stardust sprinkled on it." - Greg Cox 

Those examples came from a wonderful article called It Came From The Slush Pile by Carol Pinchefsky.

Read it and cringe!

In the mean time - I shall carry on submitting, being sure to adhere to the publishers' guidelines TO THE LETTER. Why risk scuppering my chances? It's tempting, so tempting, to make strenuous efforts to stand out from the crowd - but I live in the hope that MY WRITING will do that, not any fancy tricksie stunts.

Onwards and upwards!

 

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

Some quotes surprise me. Who would have thought Gustave Flaubert said this? Actually, I don't expect he did say it. I expect he said something like...L'écriture est la vie d'un chien, mais la seule vie digne d'être vécue.

(See how good I am at using Google Translate writing in French!)

ratiocinativa.wordpress.com 

  
 A dog's life? I suppose it depends on which dog and to whom he belongs. As a writer, I spend no time at all sleeping on the lawn in the sunshine...

or playing with socks.

I DO spend my time having cuddles though.

Yep, it's a dog's life being a writer...

Sometimes, very little writing gets done!

We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.

Now THAT'S a solution that makes sense to me, David Mamet. But why stick to a single pie?

I have just been stressed. Yes, hard to believe, I know.

Ridiculous silly little stresses but one piled on top of another so I got flustered and into crazy breathless panic mode.

This is HOW ridiculous:

I have an appointment at midday and quite a bit of work to get done before that. Rufus the puppy just bit through the phone cable in my office (fortunately not the MAINS cable, just the wireless link thingy - technical term.) The downstairs phone went. I ran to answer it. I ran back upstairs. Tried to find a replacement cable for the office phone in Pete's Box of A Thousand Useful Cables. Couldn't. Ran downstairs to get the kitchen phone (on a different wireless network) Ran back upstairs. As I arrived back in the office the (kitchen) phone went. As I answered it, Rufus the puppy peed on the carpet...

And I call that STRESS?

Yes, I know, petty, pathetic, silly. If I didn't run everywhere and remembered to breathe occasionally that would help.

I'm actually a lot better at dealing with circumstances that are MEGA, when getting stressed would be quite understandable.

Just now, looking for a quote about stress and coming across the one about pies made me laugh and WHOOOOOOOOOF...stress vanished.

Now - where's that pie?

There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns.

Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. What we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish. There is no free will. There are no variables.

Joe Vaux - Le maze unicorn

 Chuck Palahniuk, he who wrote Fight Club wrote the pattern quote in another book called Survivor

I don't think for a minute he believes all that himself. Certainly not 'There is no free will.' After all, he's a graduate of Landmark Education, so even if he forgets that he has a say in how his life is for a while, he'll soon remember that when it comes down to it, it's his responsibility and his alone.

So there!

There are patterns. Predictable patterns - I suppose that's mostly what a pattern is...(duh, and I'm meant to be good with words.)

Here's one of my patterns. One that I am determined to disrupt.

I get my courage together. I am empowered to take action. I send some of my creative writing off to publishers or agents or production companies. (Yesterday it was three.) I'm full of hope for days, half full of hope for weeks, a quarter full of hope for months, then...empty of hope.

I retire wounded into my cave of no self-belief.

Eventually, a shaft of hope penetrates the darkness from who knows where.

I crawl out of my cave of no self-belief.

I get my courage together. I am empowered to take action. I send some of my creative writing off...

But THIS TIME, I'm going to interrupt the pattern.

Not quite sure HOW yet. But just watch me...

I don't have pet peeves like some people. I have whole kennels of irritation.

Yep, Whoopi Goldberg. Me too.

brokelyn.com

Flossing at the table is not one of them, though it might be if anyone I knew did it.

So here is one of mine - one, which, by the very act of stating it, might alienate me from a number of publishers. However, I look at it like this (when I'm feeling phlegmatic) - 'Would I want to be represented by a company that did THIS?' (Helpfully ignoring the notion that they wouldn't want to touch an arsey person like me with a ten foot bargepole.)

THIS...

"Unfortunately, due to the large volume of manuscripts submitted, we are unable to respond to unsuccessful submissions."

REALLY...how long does it take to press the Send button on a pro forma e-mail prepared for the purpose,  saying 'Thanks but no thanks. We will not enter into any discussion about our reasons and good luck for the future."

ESPECIALLY when the work is so very often submitted by e-mail anyway, as requested.

It takes (me) quite a lot of courage to send something off in the first place. It isn't much fun waiting, waiting, waiting for a response. It's actually far more healthy to receive a negative response - a clean dagger to the heart...

than it is to be left wondering.

I feel a campaign coming on.

What do you most value in your friends?

"Their continued existence."  (Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22)

And today, revelling in their continued existence, I'm off up to London
to meet some of those very friends.

To have lunch at Wahaca  

 (Just how tasty and nourishing ARE Mexican markets? A lot of canvas, I expect.)

Then, to see a film together...I kind of hope it will be Byzantium and not Ironman 3...
but being with my friends, it doesn't matter that much - 
oh, as long as they don't eat popcorn too near to me.

Happy days!

Caroline came to a fork in the road.

'Which road do I take?' she asked.
'Where do you want to go?' responded the Cheshire Cat.
'I don't know,' Caroline answered.
'Then,' said the Cat, 'it doesn't matter.”

From Alice Caroline in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll. Maybe.

                                                                                                                                                                        

By John Tenniel

Was still wrestling with the same dilemma - the dilemma so eloquently (or pitifully) described here

So - I have come to a decision! And, as the Chesire Cat says, since I'm uncertain, then it doesn't really matter which decision I take.

I am going to give myself another three months to find a publisher. I've researched and discovered some small, independent companies which take unsolicited manuscripts directly from authors, not via agents.

They seem like my sort of companies too. Friendly, looking for something a bit different, rather than wanting a safe formulaic pot-boiler. Quirky, even.

SO...I feel heaps better. Some sort of time-limited strategy rather than this endless flip-floppy amorphous limbo-land I've been inhabiting lately.

In fact, I'm almost grinning from ear to ear like...