This is the reality of my life. Last month on the PPW blog, I wrote a rousing
post on Indie pubbing, giving my stories to the world no matter! It was all so full speed ahead, take no
prisoners, damn the torpedoes, or in the words of that lovely workaholic
polygamist Dagny Taggert, GET OUT OF MY WAY!
This month, not really feeling it. My current work in progress is too long, too
unmarketable, too dripping with tears and complications. All my query letters are going unanswered. I’d rather take a physical beating than email
silence from the traditional publishing industry. I’m working with an editor at a small press,
but I don’t have a contract yet. Writing
feels like a chore, not just a little chore, but like cleaning out the Augean
stables. Marketing, even worse. More like when Hercules had to shoulder the
world for Atlas to get the apples of the Hesperides. My website is out of date and lonely. I’m off track shopping projects around. Things feel bleak.
I’m so not Hercules at this point. Nor very Atlas
Shrugged. I still can mix metaphors,
so I got that going for me.
Do I still show up and write and do the marketing
stuff? Yes. Do I do it overjoyed and inspired? Hardly. Writing is a vocation, like being a priest or a monk or a nun. It takes stupid amounts of
self-discipline. Writing is less divine act
of sacred storytelling, more bricklaying. Does the bricklayer lay bricks with joy and inspiration in his\her
heart? Some days, probably, other days,
it’s just mortar, baby, just one brick at a time.
I was talking with a friend about all this, when it hit
me. I’m impatient. I want glory, fame, truckloads of greenback
dollar bills, right now. I don’t want to
march anymore like a good little writerly soldier. I wanna' fly to Olympus on my very own
gold-plated Pegasus. I want Harry Potter
amounts of success, and I want it yesterday. I want adoration, damn you.
So I say all that, loudly, in public. People stare, and my friend says, “What would that give you?”
Big pause. Even if I
could quit my day job, live the dream, write full-time, would everyday still
shine like diamonds, which are forever? No. Would I be able to write all
the books I want to write? No. What would change? Maybe I’d get some adoration, but I’d also
get packs of critics chewing on my heart.
So I go back to the basics. Writing is its own reward. Writing is hard, but it’s the hard that makes it good. My job is to write stories and get them out into the world. Which means laying one word next to
another next to another. Which means
sending out the emails to the abyss the traditional publishing industry is
becoming, a void where query letters go to die.
It’s so not sexy. It’s so not my dreams of riches and praise. It is what it is. What else should I be doing with my time?
Yes, if I didn’t write, I could get caught up on movies, but I’ve been watching
a lot of summer movies, and mostly, they are all very explosion-y. Are they worth the precious minutes of my
life? Not really.
Writing is worth the time I spend on it. In the end, writing is a gift to the
world. Might just be a small gift, but
it’s still a gift.
About the Writer: YA Paranormal author Aaron Michael Ritchey has penned a dozen manuscripts in his 20 years as a writer. When he isn’t slapping around his muse, Aaron cycles to look fabulous, works in medical technologies, and keeps his family in silks and furs. His first novel, The Never Prayer, hit the streets on March 29, 2012. Most recently, his work appears in the steampunk anthology The Penny Dread Tales Volume III and in the latest issue of Electric Spec.
About the Writer: YA Paranormal author Aaron Michael Ritchey has penned a dozen manuscripts in his 20 years as a writer. When he isn’t slapping around his muse, Aaron cycles to look fabulous, works in medical technologies, and keeps his family in silks and furs. His first novel, The Never Prayer, hit the streets on March 29, 2012. Most recently, his work appears in the steampunk anthology The Penny Dread Tales Volume III and in the latest issue of Electric Spec.