The joy of hard work

A couple of days this week I've felt very grumpy, and I haven't been able to work out why.  That is, until a writer I follow on Twitter posted his submission statistics.

I've more or less given up submitting short stories to magazines.  I've been telling myself for the last couple of years that nobody likes my work, so what is the point.  Then this writer happened to share that it had taken him thirty years to sell something.  And suddenly my twenty years of struggle didn't seem excessive.

I have a definite love-hate relationship with the publishing industry.  You can read yourself silly on articles telling you how to write pitches and synopses.  You can go on workshops which tell you how to write your novel until your money runs out.  And none of that will ultimately help you.  

In the end, whether an editor buys a story, or an agent takes you on as a client, is down to nothing more than idividual taste. And it seems that my work doesn't appeal to a lot of people.  I could try and change what I write, to more closely conform to what I think the market wants, but stuff that.  It would mean me writing about things I don't believe in, and people I don't really care for.  I couldn't waste my energy doing that.  I couldn't write grimdark to save my life.

When I get the gripes about publishing the thing which saves me is retreating back into my writing.  It's writing about what I care about, in my unique way.  The writing is the joy for me.  It's the intense periods of planning a novel, seeing the story grow out of thin air, working out how the narrative flows from one viewpoint character to the next, passing the story between them like a team of relay runners.

It's writing about the beauty of sunrises and sunsets, imagining how these might look on alien worlds. And one of my particular joys is writing about alien big cats.  I have a highly intelligent species in the novel I'm currently editing, and I'm really enjoying developing the personality and culture of the cats.  I even have one as a viewpoint character.

It's writing about the sunrises and sunsets, the talking alien cats, the building of planets, and of characters' histories and cultures, which are the real joys.  Writing about my passions, writing about the things I love, is what keeps me sane, and returns me to joy when I've had yet another bruising tangle with the publishing industry.