Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Clearing my thoughts

Haven't posted since October 2009. Not really sure why today. Partly just to see if writing will help me focus my thoughts.

For all that I haven't posted here in a long time, the blog still gets readers on a regular basis--though most of them are looking at a single page--the piece that I wrote on a quotation of Emerson, which on its own gets one to two new visitors every day. For whatever reason that one posting gets a lot of attention.

Last time I posted, I had just sent off the manuscript of the book I was working on to the publisher. Now it is done. The book is out. My first book. Even if I was the second author.

Since then I wrote two more complete drafts of my own book--which I had been talking about in previous posts--my own book on writing.

I recently sent a proposal to one publishing house. The editor looked at the proposal, requested the manuscript, and then rejected the manuscript. I consider this a victory. I sent off a proposal, got a response, and the response was positive. Then I got rejected. But it wasn't immediate. The book proposal and manuscript have been sent to another publisher, and I'm waiting to hear back.

If you want to get published, I think you have to be ready to get rejected. I'm working on that. It's hard getting rejected. My hopes got up when the publisher asked for the manuscript. And once I got rejected, it took a lot of wind out of my sails. It took me weeks to revise/rewrite the proposal for the new publisher. Yes, I wrote the first one specifically for a single publisher, and I revised/rewrote for the second, and suspect that I will target it to each individual publisher I send to.

I don't know who is next. If rejected by the publisher I've sent it to, I don't know what publisher I would try next. Maybe an academic one? But maybe a trade house? And it's a different world between the two. Anyway...it's on my mind.

Painful waiting to hear back on something that might get rejected. I e-mailed the publisher and got an auto-response saying "out of the office; won't look at your mail until next week." So I know that I have to wait at least until next week.

OK, so I hadn't really been thinking about my own manuscript in a while, but it has been neglected while I've worked on the proposals.

I still have other work, too. Writing always helps get stuff in order--especially my thoughts. I don't know why I don't do more of it.

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