Sometimes I Get Depressed

Yesterday I sat at the computer, looking to find all the publishers I could to submit my work to. I started on a website that listed publishers and found that a lot were way too small, didn't seem to want what I had written, or wanted an exclusive look at my manuscript for up to a year. Sorry. A year is a long time to wait for one publisher. So, I went back to look at agents and found that anyone I hadn't queried already looked like idiots. Then I went to Writer's Market and went through their publisher listings and found too few that would take submissions from un-agented writers. You have to have an agent to get a publisher, and you have to have been published to get an agent. But people break through, so what am I doing wrong?

I know precisely what I am doing wrong. I got frustrated and gave up. I had the same trouble when I took math classes in high school. I'd come across something that just didn't make sense, my heart would start beating, I'd bet frustrated, then angry, then pissed, then I'd just give up. Well, I can't do that with this. I can get frustrated and angry and pissed, but I can't give up. If this is seriously what I want to do with my life, then I need to make a serious go at it.

I realized, I don't have to do all this crap in one day. I have time. I have a future sugar momma that will take care of me for a while. So today I started going through my second novel to see what I wanted to put in the second draft. I quickly realized that while Cosette's Journey is rated PG (or maybe even G), Girl With Two Souls is going to get a firm PG-13 (assuming the literary world had content ratings). I like the story and its more fun to be creative. I'll come back to the submission thing in a day or a week and send out queries for Cosette's Journey, just not right now. And I have back up plans if things don't work. The blessing I have (which sometimes keeps me from sleeping well) is that my brain never stops working. I am ALWAYS thinking about something. Sometimes it stupid, but sometimes it evolves into and idea. And it works for creating new stories and for coming up with ways to sell and market my book. There are things I would like to try that would probably end up failing in the short term, but who knows? It some of them could have long term success. But I know one thing. I have to build a fan base, and I can't do that without getting my stories out there. And I can't get stories out if they're not written.

So, sometimes I get depressed. I think all writer's do. But Jim Butcher said on his website that one trick of getting published is not giving up. When another writer gets frustrated and gives up, you have to keep going. In January I'll have been writing seriously for two years. Some writers have gone ten years or longer before success. Some never get it. I don't want to end up like Christopher Paolini who got his Eragon and Eldest books published but has major failings as a writer. I want to earn my success. I want to grow as an author. I want fans to support me because what I've written is good, not because I'm a fad.

So, back to writing.