Mar 07 2008
Continuing a tradition…
…of quoting Elizabeth Bear when she says something smart:
This is where the professionalism comes in, and I keep telling myself that. That craftsmanship and hard work carry you over the places where inspiration fails.
This and other awesome writerly advice can be found over at Storytellers Unplugged.
It’s good to remember that that’s part of what we’re doing as writers when starting out, not only filling the toolbox but building the home for inspiration to inhabit when it visits. When the guest has gone away, the home persists, and can even flourish; at the very least one needs to maintain it in good form until your guest returns again.
Or, get your butt in that chair and write. Practice daily. It takes an average of over two years for a first novel to get sold, so what are you waiting for? The you of two+ years from now will thank you. And the Muse will come.
Where’d you get the two year average? Is that two years after an agent agrees to represent it? Because otherwise I am boggled that there are people who have responses from more than one publisher within two years without an agent, and I can’t really think that the average novel sells to the first publisher who sees it. Also, what data gets factored into that? Only first novels that eventually do sell? Does that count first published novels that are not first submitted novels?
It could be that I know all the backwards children in SF and fantasy, all the ones who have editors ignoring them for ages and very few of the ones whose novels get read within a few months of submission. I doubt it, though.
Sorry it’s early in the morning for my brain, there definitely should have been an over in there to start and I added a + as well. Though I think I’ve probably met a few more who were on the shorter end of the waiting game spectrum, which might skew my perceptions of the process a bit. What do you think is a more accurate projection?