Frustration
I got a quick email from my agent a few days ago. She’s in New York chatting up editors and has a few nibbles on my time travel. Her email mentioned that they might go for it if I kept it light, like Nobody’s Saint. They weren’t too keen on the time-travel thing, though. Never mind that time-travel was hot a heartbeat ago. I read the email and thought, “Hey, they’re not saying no. This is good.”
At 2:00 this morning, I’m thinking, “I’m done. ‘Keep it light,’ they say." I planned on a lot of funny moments as things got lost in translation and my hero had to adapt to a totally new and far more primitive world. But as much as the book is about love, it’s also about corporate greed and what happens to a man when he gets too far removed from the people who work under him. The heroine, well, she’s in charge of a hundred farms—the equivalent of a sizable corporation in her day. But if she looks out for number one above the people she’s in charge of, they starve in front of her very eyes. She knows this, and runs her life and lands accordingly. It’s an eye-opening experience for the hero.
So does ‘keep it light’ preclude this? My agent, and even my editor, and I talked about this a long time ago. Everybody talks about “branding” yourself as a writer. My “brand” is that I take so-called modern issues and place them into a different context, a different point in time. Nobody’s Saint was the exception, mainly because of the hero. (I had started him out as a minor character in Into His Arms. He didn’t lend himself to my usual themes.) I start thinking, I don’t want to chase the market. “Hey, contemporary’s hot. Try writing that.” So I write a contemporary. Write the whole damned book and I feel really good about it. Nope, not what they’re looking for unless I make massive changes that take it outside of what I set out to write.
It was easier, actually, when I was unpublished. I wrote the book of my heart. I sold the sequels on proposals and did with them what I bloody well pleased. Now, I’m trying to write for the market, and it feels just like teaching to that damned test. Ick.
So I’m gearing up to get my masters next year. I doubt I’ll be able to raise kids, write novels, teach full time, and get a degree. It makes me sad, in a way, but there are realities to deal with. (Of course, a book sale could change the plan. Who knows?)
And then I think, this is NOT the time of year to make decisions of any kind. It’s not the time of year for self-evaluation or reflection of any kind. The vortex starts opening, and I ask stupid questions like, “What I have I done with my life to merit breathing, going on when others didn’t?” and the answer never measures up. It does no good to tell me that this line of thinking is completely irrational. I am excruciatingly aware of that. What the hell, though. I’m rational about 355 days a year. That’s better than a lot of people do. And it always gets better. The hard grind usually starts on April 17th and is over by the 21st. We had this meeting Wednesday that I think started the whole thing a little earlier than usual.
On a positive note, an assistant principal came to me today to talk about next-year’s at-risk program. It makes me feel good to think about getting back to that. Things’ll work out. They always do.
Here we go again. They're still trying to control what you write and make
you into something other than yourself. I swear that all artistic agents,
management, etc. are just frustrated talent that had to settle for
administrative work instead!
Yo Paula
Take your revenge by making it mock serious and satirical and see if they
get it. Ha ha :-]
Wow, I'd be freaking too at taking on such large projects, and I did the
Masters with the raising 3 kids while working. Throwing the writing in on
top will definitly put you on the super-woman track, Paula! If anyone can
do it, it would be you. I especially see it working if writing is an
activity that restores you, which it sounds like it does.
"So I’m gearing up to get my masters next year. I doubt I’ll be able to
raise kids, write novels, teach full time, and get a degree. It makes me
sad, in a way, but there are realities to deal with."
So far as writing to the market goes, you have to ask yourself what your
motivating is for writing in the first place -- are you writing to make
money or are you writing for the joy of telling a story and to express
yourself. I know it's not always that black and white, but I'm guessing
you're writing for the joy of it and not simply as a way to make a living.
I wake up on the wrong side of the bed everyday, im always grumpy, haha.
I always wondered if Authors write for the love of it, or for the money. I have some ideas now
I'm a total idealist. I keep thinking that I can do both.
Yes, you can do both, but in the motivation for doing it in the first
place, one concern will be more important than the other...
No doubt the latter takes priority over the former. Why oh why can't I
seem to do anything just for the money? Oh yeah, I remember why--because
the people I know who choose money over passion are some of the most
unhappy people I've met.
That's what happens in this society, which is the society of discontent. No
matter what you have the hucksters out there have something better, newer,
faster, bigger, shinier. And the poor smucks listening to the pitch because
they take their cue from what other people think will never measure up.
JWL