“It’s the generosity of art, even art made purely for the artist’s sake, be it music, or writing, or painting. You are looking at a piece of someone’s soul, a snapshot of them at that moment. If you find yourself lost in it, well, maybe that just means it’s working.”
-My Angel Ellipsis…, Justin X. M. Corriss
Hey, look, I’m quoting myself. That’s kind of bold, right? It’s the kind of blind self confidence that would inspire someone to do something crazy like querying a novel.
Well… that’s what I’m doing.
It is something that requires a ridiculous amount of self confidence, which may be why I am delaying it a little. There are a multitude of other reasons for that, of course. My Angel Ellipsis… is not the book I thought I would try to get traditionally published first of the backlog I am building. There were others, be they from previous failed attempts or from a lagging effort on editing and restricting for reasons not entirely within my control.
Failure’s an important step here, and a key humbling reminder. Be it projects that have not and may never see the light of day (there’s a murder mystery and a fantasy novel gathering dust somewhere on my shelves), or a stack of competition and short rejections, the missteps along this path are as important as the steps forward. In some ways, they are one and the same. I did query the Freedom and Control series while I was still in college before I came to my senses and went with the self-publishing route for those because, and though I love it and it is my baby, it was not quite ready for publication. Because of the lagging of one piece, I took the time to give Madelen the story she deserved, and I cannot wait until I stand on the precipice of seeing her come to life.
Telgora, though, earns the first big piece of credit for this journey. I have grown so much over the course of writing and releasing those books, and that will not stop any time soon (there’s two more whole books out there!) Through them I have ostensibly built a platform, this website, these blog posts, my photography, and a stronger sense of self for it. I learned in a very fly by the seat of my pants way how to design covers, format books, edit, and the workings of ISBN’s. I also embraced the work of it all, the hours spent with those edits, the tedium of the formatting, the willingness to post and blog regularly… or semi-regularly.
What it also did was keep me engaged in the work. Through Telgora comes admission to writing groups like my beloved Veggie Patch, to coauthor projects and the willingness to submit to competitions. This was the year, after all, where I technically became a published author. The Ana is a great next leap on this journey, and by the time I received word that the story there would be published, the first draft of My Angel Ellipsis… was already done. It even had a playlist, one that is itself an oversized portion of the story.
With the mention of the Veggie Patch comes the mention of everyone who then took what I’d written and helped it along! The semi-inebriated nights of worry over this and that sentence, the dragging efforts of rewriting and editing and cutting, and cutting. Rachael deserves a heaping portion of praise, being the first to read it through in its entirety and offer consistent and copious notes, as does Mari, Drew, the Veggie Patch, and my parents.
All of this makes it sound like we’re already there, right?
Well, no. We’re standing at the edge of the dark, bearing witness to something. What that something is, we are unsure of. The news coming out of the traditional publishing world remains as grim as ever. The process of querying is legendarily taxing.
So, this weekend I return to North Carolina, where our story begins. I will remind myself of why I found that place so inspiring and why our protagonist begins his journey there. If it’s a little superstitions, so be it. I will be sending out my first round of queries while preparing to depart North Carolina in honor of the story’s beginning.
From there the road remains clouded, unsure, and long. It is not something I undertake lightly or something I feel myself necessarily fully prepared for. This is a story that is deeply personal to me, that I believe in strongly, that has been shaped by experiences and people around me into a form I can call myself, if a little sheepishly, proud of. I may never be perfectly happy with any piece of my own work, that’s true. But this will be my standard bearer, whether it be published under a penname or not and whether it is itself published or not. A bold proclamation for something I have to admit I am excited, and completely terrified, to undertake.
So, we end with the inspiring words of one of my own favorite authors, Lemony Snicket:
“If we wait until we're ready, we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives.”