This is going to be a metaphor heavy post so apologies in advance.

What I wanted to talk about was limiting yourself (forgive me if you’ve heard this all before but I think it’s worth repeating).

When I first seriously started writing for publication, there was only one publisher I considered. I wanted that publisher and no one else would do. No one else was going to be good enough. Over the years I got great feedback and encouragement but for various reasons I kept hitting brick walls. It was totally depressing and utterly demoralizing.  People kept telling me to write something else for a change but I didn’t listen. I wanted my special toy dammit! And besides, no one puts Jackie in the corner!

So there I was, steadily losing confidence in my abilities, my writing becoming narrower and narrower because I got more and more frightened that I was doing everything wrong. I was trying to write in a tiny box to please a particular publisher. Writing became something I hated, not something I loved. And yet still I wanted that publisher. I wanted their sweet, delicious oranges not bloody apples!

Luckily, before I totally lost what little confidence I had in my writing, the shouts of my CPs eventually got through my thick skull. WRITE SOMETHING ELSE JACKIE.

So I did – mainly becaue I didn’t have anything else to lose at this point. And the process was fantastic. When I’d finished I knew it wasn’t going to get me oranges but by that stage, I’d decided that I needed to listen to the people that had told me to branch out. I tried the apple tree next door and whaddya know? Those apples are crunchy and delicious and I love them as much – maybe more – than I loved oranges.

The process of writing that book and having it accepted did amazing things for my confidence. I sold another book – the peach tree next to the apple is incredible – and then more. The orange tree – which had dominated my orchard up to this point – began to shrink and I could see that there were so many more trees out there. So many more opportunities.

And that’s really what I’m trying to say. There’s nothing wrong with concentrating on one publisher but keep in mind that only liking oranges limits you, both as an aspiring author and as a published author. The publishing world is changing fast and it’s exciting but I really think it’s just good business sense to include a few apples and peaches in your basket.

Concntrating entirely on only one house also means you’re writing to please just one set of people. But they’re not the only editors out there. Just because you can’t seem to write something that grabs them doesn’t mean that ALL the editors in the entire world will hate what you write.

I’m not saying you should give up oranges entirely. I’m saying that while you’re reaching for that orange tree, keep in mind that there are plenty of other trees in the orchard. Working with one publisher might enable you to get a second. Because selling your book doesn’t mean you stop learning your craft and growing as a writer.  The past six months have been amazing for me in terms of bettering and challenging myself.  Hell, you might even find that you don’t like oranges at all,  that you’re an apple girl all the way.

Okay so I hope you didn’t get lost in all the orange/apple/peach/orchard metaphors. Basically don’t let one publisher become your be all and end all. Keep your options open. Keep writing what you love, not what you think editors want to see. Keep loving what you write and the rest will follow.

As for me, I’ve still got my eye on that orange tree. But it’s not the only tree in my particular orchard.

*Number of times entire ms rewritten – 3
*Number of times beginning rewritten – 6
*Size of ‘deleted scenes’ folder – 227k
*Number of times hero/heroine conflict changed – 3
*Number of times I wanted to kill hero/heroine – 20
*Number of tantrums pulled while writing – 50
*Number of times I wanted to give up in disgust – 100
*Number of times I DID give up in disgust – 100
*Number of times cried while writing – 5
*Number of working versions of present ms – 8
*Number of titles decided on – 0

That was in December last year.  After I’d finished that post and finished rewriting the story, I sent him off to SYTYCW, plus entered him into the Aussie Emerald competition.

He got precisely nowhere.

Didn’t get ANY feedback at all from SYTYCW and because one judge in the Emerald absolutely loathed him, I didn’t get anywhere with that either.

Here’s some stats for my Talking Dirty book from around the same time:

*Number of times entire ms rewritten – 5 – 6
*Number of times beginning rewritten – 4
*Size of ‘deleted scenes folder’ – Rewrite folder 37k, Original folder, 20k
*Number of times hero/heroine conflict changed – 6
*Number of times I wanted to kill hero/heroine – 100
*Number of tantrums pulled while writing – too many to count
*Number of times I wanted to give up in disgust – too many to count
*Number of times I DID give up in disgust – too many to count
*Number of times cried while writing – too many to count
*Number of working versions of present ms -50 million
*Number of titles decided on – 3

Oh and I should add one more line.

*Number of times rejected – 3

As you can see, both of these books nearly did me in. For the chess player I berated myself daily for the fact that I’d decided on a chess playing hero who everyone CLEARLY hated. For Talking Dirty, I berated myself daily for the fact that I knew I had a good story there, yet I couldn’t seem to find it.

BUT

I am a stubborn-ass b*tch sometimes. And I’d be damned if I let these stories – one of which got to the 2nd revision stage with M&B – languish.

So I started rewriting Talking Dirty for the 7th time and pitched it in a competition. It got a request for a full – which I wrote in a week (from chapter 3) – and then four months later, it sold to Entangled. It’s going to be out sometime in 2013 (May tentatively).

And then with my chess player, I rewrote it for the 4th time and submitted it to my editor at Samhain and that sold too.  Black Knight, White Queen, will be out in July 2013.

Why am I telling you this? Well, sometimes it’s a good thing to give up on a story. Sometimes you don’t have the experience at the time to be able to make it better. Or sometimes you’re too close to it to see it objectively. I first wrote Talking Dirty back in 2008, but it wasn’t until 2012 that I finally had the experience and knowledge to turn it into a book that sold. The chessplayer I started at the beginning of 2011 but didn’t sell it until a year and a half later. Again, it wasn’t the fact that my hero was a chessplayer that didn’t work, it was the fact that I still hadn’t got a handle on conflict or character.

But some stories you can’t let go of. Nor should you. Some stories deserve to have their time in the sun. I don’t know if this inspiration or not, but for those of you who have stories that you just can’t let go of, keep going. Keep working on them. Keep learning your craft. And one day, a year and a half, or four years, or even ten years later, eventually someone’s going to say yes.

And then you can shock everyone with your stats too.

And then some wretched people decided to write me some lovely messages. Write some lovely supportive comments on this sorry excuse for a blog. Encouraging, horribly motivating messages. So imagine my surprise when I found myself deleting my ‘giving up speech’. Picking up my towel. And more than, that, sitting down at my useless computer (it is useless, believe me, I hate the damn thing) and finishing the stupid story I’ve been slaving over for weeks.

You’re all to blame. It’s completely your fault. I would have given up. Truly.
But I’m afraid you guys talked me out of it. 

So if you’re sick of my moanings, my general carrying on about the vile hardships of being an unpublished writer searching for that lucky ten percent, my complaints about my characters, my tearings of hair and sackcloth and ashes when I get a rejection, then that’s too bad. You’ve got only yourselves to blame.

And when – if! – I ever get that magic Call, you can fully blame yourselves for that too. God knows I will. Because you guys are pretty much the only reason I’m still here.

Well, okay, perhaps not that only reason.   I quite like writing too. And that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to keep writing because I love it. Because, basically, no matter what I decide, even when I’m languishing on the couch vowing and declaring that I’ll Never Write Again,  my brain decides to churn out another couple of story ideas. And if those couple of stories happen to turn up on editors desks then hey, nothing to do with me. I’m only writing because I like writing. Nothing to do with being published. Nothing at all. (okay, so it’s a nice idea but I fear the execution may be harder than it looks).

Anyway, that’s me. I’ll be writing though perhaps not subbing. Still unpublished. But still here.

Eight months on since I first subbed the synopsis to this story and I really wish I hadn’t bothered rewriting it. But because I did, I’ve just prolonged the agony by another four months. The VoD is, of course, telling me it’s an R. The VoD is telling me I can’t rewrite, and not only can I not write a story they’ll want to buy, I’ll NEVER write a story they’ll want to buy.

Honestly, today is a ‘why on earth am I bothering with this sh*t?’ kind of day.

Anyway, why the Angry Birds? Okay, well, this morning as I checked the email on the iPad and realised that there was no email from the ed (again), in my frustration and in a desperate bid to NTAI, I started up a little app called Angry Birds. It’s a game where you have to fire a little bird from a catapult at an edifice that protects a little pig. Your aim is to crumble the edifice and pop the pig. It’s horribly addictive and quite ridiculous. Sometimes the edifices are complicated and it takes forever to pop all the pigs and complete the level. Very frustrating. You see where I’m going with this? Yes, this stupid publishing journey of mine is a lot like playing Angry Birds. No matter how complicated the edifice you have to collapse, no matter if you’ve popped all the pigs but one, no matter how close you are, you still fail the level. And so you have to try again if you want to complete the game.

So here I am, still trying to complete the game. And I’m going to pop all those pigs if it’s the last thing I do.