Taking the next step: The path to conventional publishing and being a writer in the modern-day
When I was five or six years old, my parents decided the Harry Potter books were a bit too advanced for me, so in my youthful stubbornness, I would sneak downstairs in the early morning, pre-dawn hours to get my fix in. And ever since then, I’ve wanted to be a writer.
Photo from Unsplash.
“Publishing a book is like stuffing a note into a bottle and hurling it into the sea. Some bottles drown, some come safe to land, where the notes are read and then possibly cherished, or else misinterpreted, or else understood all too well by those who hate the message. You never know who your readers might be.”
The first time I submitted a novel to a publishing house, I was 12 years old. Lol. It was awful, but they humored me, with my resume saying I had “all As in English class,” and nothing else. The next time I submitted, I was 16, and it was admittedly, a little better, and the publishing house asked to see the entire manuscript, which they swiftly rejected. Cool.
Now, at 24, I’ve begun submitting to agents and publishing houses again. No word yet, as I’ve just started (and it, on average, takes between six weeks to a full year to hear anything), but it brings back familiar feelings that I’ve not been looking forward to confronting.
As a writer, the worst fear you can have is rejection. Because you face it ALL the time. Just this week, I’ve been rejected by three literary magazines for poems I’ve submitted. I know it’s highly likely that the agents and publishers I’ve submitted to won’t give my book a second glance. This time around, I’m facing these rejections with a different mindset though -- I really don’t care.
I had a long chat with a friend recently, and we discussed the value of our writing -- even if other people don’t see its value or don’t need its value at the time. This mindset is important in publishing, applying to graduate programs, and the like. Being rejected is not a condemnation of your ability as a writer. Rather, it may be indicative of applying/submitting to the wrong places.
Either way, I figure it will take a while to get my book published the traditional route, which is fine. If I get dejected or get sick of the process, I can always go with self-publishing. I may not sell as many copies (though there’s no guarantee I’d sell copies the traditional way either), but at least it will be out there for the world to see.
But for now, I’m starting down this path, including looking at graduate programs, and ready to face the rejection that is surely coming my way.
Here’s a poem. Feel free to let me know what you think in the comments.
A cat named NakamuraI sit on a stoop in ankle-crossed
madness.
There is not a cat in this poem.
I sit on a stoop with crossed knees
bent to starlight, wondering where
or why stoops exist anymore, or
whether the daylight beats concrete
blind. Why do I write my poems in
the first person? Are poems not meant
to discern the ethereal in the everyday?
Am I not that?
There is not a cat in this poem.
Let’s try again.
Piss-scented, manure coated lawn chairs,
& there should be a cat in this poem, a cat
named Nakamura after the Murakami novel
rested between wood and thigh, a place
we sit in ankle-stooped madness, or ankle-
crossed, or midnight tinted apple trees in a
front yard only Michigan knows.
Nakamura speaks & then remembers.
There is not a point where we are not
centered stillness.
Nakamura curls underneath the stillness,
thickened skin cross-stitched by starlight,
& there is a cat named Nakamura in this
poem, who speaks in bold, in age-old
blurred inconsistencies.
Nakamura speaks & then remembers.
