Gulp
Polishing is done for Signs and Wonders. I just have to burn a CD and print out the cover letter...and head to the post office. I really don't know what kind of reaction this one will get. This is a manuscript I wrote, oh, a couple of years ago and decided when I'd finished that it was too out there, too experimental for anyone to take from an unknown author. But then I read Gene Wolfe and decided to pull it back out. I did some revisions and posted it for my critiquing group and was actually pleasantly surprised by the response, including from writers whose tastes are quite different from mine (and different from what I'd guess would be the target audience).
And then about a year ago I was still feeling like the story was missing something...and finally decided what that something was. And that got even higher praise. And the final revisions last fall and then the polishing just now has made it considerably stronger since then (I think). But a part of me still wonders if it's still too far out there. Just a few days ago I compared it to music that's "pretentious without the skill to back it up" because I sometimes feel like that's what this is. My skill as a writer was no where near enough when I started it...it remains to be seen if my growth since then (and I know my writing ability has improved dramatically) has reached the point where the story is as it needs to be. I hope so. I go back and forth between thinking it's brilliant and will cause a stir in the field (even if it's never anything close to a bestseller) and thinking that an editor will look at it and say that it's just a bunch of hand-waving disguising an inferior story. Or inferior storytelling. Or whatever.
I'm getting so used to sending out short fiction and not worrying about whether it gets rejected or not. But this...
Polishing is done for Signs and Wonders. I just have to burn a CD and print out the cover letter...and head to the post office. I really don't know what kind of reaction this one will get. This is a manuscript I wrote, oh, a couple of years ago and decided when I'd finished that it was too out there, too experimental for anyone to take from an unknown author. But then I read Gene Wolfe and decided to pull it back out. I did some revisions and posted it for my critiquing group and was actually pleasantly surprised by the response, including from writers whose tastes are quite different from mine (and different from what I'd guess would be the target audience).
And then about a year ago I was still feeling like the story was missing something...and finally decided what that something was. And that got even higher praise. And the final revisions last fall and then the polishing just now has made it considerably stronger since then (I think). But a part of me still wonders if it's still too far out there. Just a few days ago I compared it to music that's "pretentious without the skill to back it up" because I sometimes feel like that's what this is. My skill as a writer was no where near enough when I started it...it remains to be seen if my growth since then (and I know my writing ability has improved dramatically) has reached the point where the story is as it needs to be. I hope so. I go back and forth between thinking it's brilliant and will cause a stir in the field (even if it's never anything close to a bestseller) and thinking that an editor will look at it and say that it's just a bunch of hand-waving disguising an inferior story. Or inferior storytelling. Or whatever.
I'm getting so used to sending out short fiction and not worrying about whether it gets rejected or not. But this...
Comments
silly, silly man.