I continue in my purge of my workroom. After recycling the manuscripts of my Elizabeth Goodweather novels, I turned to the stack of notebooks that contained the printed material of ten years or more of writing classes, publicity pieces, interviews, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Out with them! But I'm conscientious enough to want to recycle all that paper which means removing it from the plastic page protectors and also tearing off any staples. And in the course of this, getting a nostalgic trip back in time. Lots of good classes, good students, good memories.
Then I hit a notebook with printed out emails from my early efforts in 2002 to find an agent--and a representative sampling of rejection. There had been around sixty but I only kept the positive ones--the ones that said nice things about my writing while gently turning me down.
Then there was the excitement of an offer from an agent, my acceptance, and her attempts to sell that first book. More positive rejections and finally the decision to put that first novel aside and try again with what became Signs in the Blood.
It was like reliving that roller coaster of emotions when, a year later, my agent began trying to sell SIGNS. And oh, the joy and edge-of-my-seat tension when the agent let me know that Kate Miciak at Bantam Dell was interested!
The rewriting, the adding a subplot, the tweaking the ending, as emails flew between Kate and my agent and me. At last, the contract! A modest two book deal!
And then all those memories went into the recycling. It was nice to remember the excitement, and my agent's great sense of humor. And I still got a thrill at seeing Kate's encouraging words.
But, the nice thing is, I don't miss any of it. It was all a fine experience and I'm glad I had it. But I'm happy not to be writing into the wee hours, trying to make a deadline.
Been there. Done that.
6 comments:
Your experiences behind the scenes as a writer are of interest to me, that the inspiration and actual words to paper are not magically turning into the book I hold in my hands, a whole lifetime of actions hidden until now! Not to mention the feeling you had while doing so. A big chunk of the creative process.
I understand from the author in the family that this is quite a process.Assuming that I cold write a book, which I can’t, I think that I would find the process too daunting.
I have to purge all the old stuff in my home office too. I have no desire to reread any of it. When people tell me they want me to write more books, I just shake my head. I don't have many years left, and I don't want to spend them sitting alone at a computer, making up stories about imaginary people. I want to be outdoors, visiting the believed places I have missed during my long years of illness. It's starting to look as if that might be possible.
The comment just above was from me. I keep forgetting to fill out the form to identify myself.
I knew it was you. And I so hope you get to do some of those things!
I'm glad you wrote the books you did but understand why youve moved on from that.
I tried my hand at writing children's picture books. Only sent one to a publisher and got a rejection. I pulled them out recently to look at again sometime. It's on my to do list for the future.
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