015—The Decision
“You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, ‘This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I’m doing the best I can—buy me or not—but this is who I am as a writer.”~David Morrell
I completed a novel. Cool, right? Sixty-five-thousand words to create one complete idea, one entire cohesive story I needed to get the hell out of my twisted brain.
I spent months doing edits, had beta readers critique the book, then edited more until I conceded that The Ghost of Time Forgotten was officially finished. I wrote and edited query letters and attempted making a more concise synopsis—numerous times. Then I spent hours on Query Tracker researching agents and sending approximately thirty queries, all to rejections or a lack of response.
Was it scary for me to send work out for the first time? Yes. Was I disheartened with the responses or lack thereof? Occasionally. Do I understand why I achieved the result? Absolutely.
I had the pleasure of an editor friend from my writers’ group offer to take a look at my first pages to break down the likely reasons why I received rejections, including one or two that felt near immediate. Everything she said made perfect sense, and some of the advice I received will stay with me forever.
I began making changes, removing multiple pages to open the novel. I needed to create more intrigue, more questions, more tension. I changed a supporting character to walk down a hall towards my MC, apprehensive to deliver some bad news. And as some of my initial literary discourse dissolved into nothing in order to create more action in my narrative, my book very simply and quickly felt…wrong.
The advice I received was one-hundred percent accurate, yet the larger problem became my belief that I was no longer writing the book I had set out to create. It’s a wonderful time to be a writer with this concern, however, two things occurred near simultaneously.
I wasted a bit of time on social media, and at that exact moment I questioned what I was doing, I came across a meme that both cracked me up and encapsulated the vibe I was concerned to lose. Indie author Rick Hughes writes on Instagram about writing the book you need to read. Perhaps I did, maybe I didn’t. What I did do was write the book I felt like writing.
I wrote in Blog #3—Self Investment for Creators how I was insanely lucky to have others invest their time in my goals, including creation of inspirational notes to keep me going. I felt at a crossroads, and opened the jar of intricately wired notes, pulled out a random scroll, and read these words:
This quote from David Morrell came immediately after the meme depicting the uniqueness and quirky nature of self-publishing authors, and I knew: The Ghost of Time Forgotten was being published.
Do I wish to be traditionally published? Sure. Do I believe I still have that novel in me? Yes, and my current WIP is more traditionally defined, fitting neatly in a specific genre that opens on a hook and continues feeding that fire. At that moment though, I realized that not only was The Ghost of Time Forgotten not going to be that book, it also occurred to me how proud I was to call it mine.
Write what makes you happy. Write what makes you indescribably you, and be proud of what you’ve created.
I hope you enjoy The Ghost of Time Forgotten. I enjoyed writing it. We’ll catch up the weekend of February 10th to celebrate.