Wow. It was really hard to start this post. Even now, I find my gaze wandering around the room as I type. My defense mechanism is doing everything it can to keep me from thinking too deeply about why I shouldn’t think too deeply.

Because if I think deeply, things might change, and that makes me afraid. I might get what I want, and that makes me feel guilty. I might fail, and then I’ve let everybody down. I might be imperfect–in front of everybody, no less–which is unacceptable. Every active step is another step toward upending other people, and this is unforgiveable. So I stay where I am.

Except, to stay where I am means I must distract myself, so I actually can’t stay still for more than a few minutes at a time. I must have plenty of projects going at once. That way when I finish one I can move right on to another, which leaves no time for ponderings that might lead me down another path. When I solve one problem, there’s another waiting. Thank God I’m doing such a good job with the distractions, because otherwise I’d have to admit that writing is my calling after all, and I’m really just scared.

And you know, this is all pretty silly, because it’s nothing I haven’t figured out before. The surprise is how strong the roots around my ankles are. Why has it come to a head now? Maybe because the roots have grown bigger than I realized, and they threaten to strangle me. It’s fear, all right. Fear of success, failure, change. Fear of meeting myself, of imperfection, but most of all, fear of emotion. Fear of losing control, of hurting someone or myself with those pesky emotions that seem to always be at odds with my surroundings. Why does it have to be so hard? I know what I want to feel, what I should feel, so why can’t I feel it?

I’ve been stuffing my emotions for so long now that I can’t comprehend what I’ve just written. Trying to edit the previous paragraphs would strip them of all meaning, if you can understand them in the first place. This is raw, just like the fear that I am only beginning to allow into the light, and this post might not be here tomorrow.

Last time I made an unexpected connection between the failures of the two huge artistic ventures in my life, singing and writing. (And yes, I do consider myself a failed writer at this point, but I hope to change that.) This realization brought other, smaller connections to light–things I’d already identified independently, but when interconnected make a sizeable web of self-sabotage.

For instance, many, many projects go unfinished. I become bored with them sometimes, but lots of times I’m tenacious and just can’t seem to get to the finish line. Little things outside of my control might go wrong or I can freeze up with indecision, but for any number of reasons I end up spinning my wheels. And I’m not talking only about writing. It’s a widespread problem encompassing home projects, marital issues, financial goals, etc.

This is the mechanism that caused me to stop trying to get published. It is confusion, fatigue and the inability to see the path, just like when I decided to stop singing. But it’s a completely different feeling from what keeps me from sitting down to writing at all.

Another stumbling block is trying to please everyone. I’m skilled at going into other people’s worlds, and terrible at bringing others into mine. Personally, I think this is what makes me a writer—because I’m able to go deeply and intuitively into the worlds I create—but it’s not so great for decisive action, nor for knowing what I really want.

Part of that pleasing everyone thing means I don’t take care of myself, like going to the doctor when I’m sick, or exercising and eating right. If it’s just for me, it doesn’t matter. Writing pleases me, when I let it, but it doesn’t matter to anyone else.

It got to a point where my identity had absorbed so much of other people that I didn’t have any of myself left. I’ve spent a few years trying to unravel that thread, and maybe I’m almost ready to start rebuilding. But something stops me short. Something keeps me from crossing that finish line—not just with writing, but with pretty much everything that would define me as an independent, productive human being. Now, is that fear of success, or fear of happiness?

I’ll explore that next time.

So I finally got the book edited and sent off. A few weeks ago I had compiled a list of a few small publishers, but after the edit was done and I began to write my query letter, I realized there was only one I felt comfortable submitting to. First I eliminated any that had a book too similar to mine, and then my main criteria was professional-looking covers and website. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but people do. I do. If I see an amateurish cover, I might assume the book inside has been amateurishly written and edited. It’s about quality standards. And no, it’s not foolproof, but if the only publisher I can snag is one who can’t make my book look professional, well then I can do that myself.

Anyway, the single publisher I chose to submit BVA to is Carina Press, the digital-first arm of Harlequin. They accept non-romance genres, and since they publish digitally, they’re not so sticky about word count—at 72k words, BVA is a little shorter than expected in the fantasy genre. It’ll take a couple of months to hear back from them, and once they reject it (*snort* pessimism, anyone?) I’ll publish on Smashwords, I guess.

I must say that if I do self-pub it, it will be only for my peace of mind. With “Mon Petit Ami,” I got the most wonderful feeling of closure on a piece that I’d anguished over for years. It was done a long time ago, but I seemed to get stuck on it, unable to put it down for good. I’ve got over a hundred downloads on it, which is pretty cool, even though I sold only one copy to a friend. But the point is, it feels done now that it has an ISBN. And hopefully this will also work for Ea’s Gift and Black Veil Angel, if it comes down to that.

An OCD housewife falls in love with her son’s toy ninja–but she does find it odd that the toy speaks French…

Or possibly just dipping a toe. I took one of my old, beloved stories and published it on Smashwords. For those who’ve never heard of it, Smashwords is a website that automates the self-epublishing process. You upload your story, and their machine converts your file into all the popular e-reading formats. Very easy.

I have lots of friends who’ve published with Smashwords, but I haven’t been interested in doing it. My writing career was up in the air, so far that I didn’t know where it would come down, or even if it would. I needed things to settle–in particular, my feelings about writing. I’ve been hiding from the world while I sort things out.

Then a lot of things happened all at once. I had a birthday (41). We ran out of money and had to eat beans and hamburger stew for a week, which put me in action mode real quick as I started looking for a job. Putting myself out there flipped the switch, and suddenly I’m ready to start blogging again, Facebooking with purpose, discussing writing and publishing.

Now as this switch was being flipped, my friend Allie had a pretty awesome experience. She’s been self-epublishing on Smashwords and Kindle, and I don’t know where else, and she’s much more prolific than I, so she has lots of titles available. One day, Amazon started offering one of her titles for free and downloads went through the roof–like, 10,000 in a couple of days. She didn’t get a penny for these downloads, but thousands of people were reading her work.

It was eye-opening for me, watching this unfold. I had thought of epublishing as another career direction, with all that entailed: marketing and money and business and blah, blah, blah. I knew I didn’t want to do all that stuff myself. Allie’s exhilarating experience reminded me that writing is also fun, with an element of chance. The wheel of fortune can’t turn if you’ve stuck a stick in the spokes. The past couple of weeks has unstuck the wheel.

So. The story’s not perfect, but I’ve been waiting for perfection to grace me and I can’t wait any longer. The story’s good; some have told me it’s funny and/or creepy. It’s also free, so you don’t have to have a Smashwords account to read it. If you do read it, I’d appreciate a short and honest review. I promise I’ll still love ya.

Cheers!

You know how big a deal that is. Or maybe you don’t, because I’m not sure how much of that angst came through in my sporadic posting. But let me tell you, it’s a big deal.

It is Independence Day weekend—could this event signal new creative independence? Freedom from fear, from stagnation, from oppression?

I don’t know, but it feels good. Give me a flag to wave.

I haven’t been writing fiction at all for a long while, so long that I don’t even feel guilty anymore. Letting my agent go let me go. I felt like the band of a slingshot must feel right after it releases its missile, flaccidly bouncing with the force of the release. I’m not ready to load another stone, but I am finally still enough to begin hunting for the perfect one. The hunt might take a while, and apparently I’m fine with that.

As I’m opening files and emails I haven’t looked at in months, I’ve found something disturbing. I’d thought Black Veil Angel, what I consider my better book, had been barely subbed, maybe to ten or so smaller publishers, while Ea’s Gift had been subbed to the death. Now I see it’s the other way around. My agent had abandoned EG in favor of BVA (apparently it was the better book), and I was so deep in my helplessness that I’d never laid the subs out side by side.

The reason this is disturbing is that BVA was going to get me another agent, if I ever decided to try that route again, and EG was self-pub fodder, something that didn’t have a life in traditional publishing but was good enough to experiment with. I thought my future was in contemporary fantasy anyway, so it would be fine. But the most likely next project, the one that captures my imagination, is another traditional fantasy like EG, complete with a dragon.

So all this means is that I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. This whole time I’ve been trying to balance what I want to write with what I think others want me to write, which is impossible. I bought into the advice that it’s best to have a whole bunch of people read your stuff and tell you how to fix it, no matter what. I’m starting to think this is a big reason my creativity died.

Other people, those who don’t have a people-pleasing gene as dominant as mine, might do well with this advice. For me, it’s just managed to confuse me enough that I freeze up. I haven’t had a vision for my projects, I see in hindsight, except to write what pleases others. And not in an attagirl way, an ego puffing way, but that if other people don’t like my work, then my work isn’t valid.

What I see now is, if others don’t like my work it might not get published, but that doesn’t make it less valid. And once I understood that, it was easy to see that somebody is going to like my work, if I am authentic and true. Some people know this and apply it instinctively. I never did.

Over the weekend I attended a banquet at the OWFI writer’s conference. The Saturday night banquet ends the conference, and that is also the night they announce the winners in the annual contest. The last time I won anything was 1st Honorable Mention for a confession story, of all things, in 2000, and I wasn’t even there to receive my certificate. I don’t enter every year—I’d say I’ve entered maybe three times since. No winners.

The good thing about entering the contest is getting feedback from the professionals who volunteer to judge. I’d forgotten to put postage on the return envelopes, so that meant I’d have to pick up my entries in person. Which meant I might as well lay down $40 for the banquet.

Well, I’m glad I went, because I actually won something. My first novel, Ea’s Gift—the one that landed my former agent—took 3rd place in the fantasy novel category!

I’d entered it five years ago, before it was completely finished (they only need the synopsis and 1st 30 pages) and the judge slammed it, but apparently he slammed all of them, because on his blog he lamented the terribleness of the entries. Yes. Publicly. He’s a fairly well-known writer now, of novels and screenplays, though he wasn’t big then.

So anyway, a finished, polished Ea’s Gift got much more helpful comments. I think it helps when the judge enjoys your sub-genre, too, since Fantasy is such a large umbrella with too many different styles under it. Go visit Ty Drago. He’s got taste. Also, he’s a Quaker. I like Quakers.

I got good comments on Black Veil Angel as well, but the judge felt it shouldn’t have been entered in the YA category. That hurt the score. You know what’s funny? I had just put this judge at the top of my new agent query list for BVA, but I didn’t realize she was the judge for my category. I guess I don’t need to bother now.

My short story, Mon Petit Ami, didn’t get any comments but the score was in the 80–89 range, out of a hundred. She had a huge number of entries, so I don’t hold it against her.

I feel validated, which I really needed, but I still don’t know what to do with these stories. I’ve been looking at small presses and at self e-publishing and at agents. I’m feeling pretty creative, so maybe I’ll just write for a while.

I use Duotrope to narrow down the search for magazine markets, and while it’s an indispensable tool, it doesn’t make it an automatic process by any means. I’ve been researching for almost an hour and haven’t come up with one viable market. I’m starting at the high end of the payscale and working my way down, so I’m sure I’ll come across something eventually, but meanwhile, it’s drudgery.

The first challenge is defining the work, in terms of genre (fantasy), subgenre (light fantasy? magic realism? We’ll go with “Any subgenre.”), style (I’d call it quirky, but that returns no results so again: “Any subgenre.”). I choose my story specs, length and such, and hit Enter. I get 70 results. Wowzers. That’s a lot of stuff to go through, and of course I’m not familiar with most of these markets so not only do I have to research their submission requirements, but also their style to see if my story will match. I’m afraid my story won’t match any style.

I’d like to get paid, of course, but I’m mostly hungry for a cred, so I choose any payscale and sort from high to low. I don’t want to wait for six months before I can submit again, so I discard those who won’t take simultaneous submissions. I’m working my way through the list, but I’ll have to take a break before I make any real progress, it seems.

What method do you use for sorting through all these markets? Have you been successful? I’d love to hear how you climbed to the summit of Market Mountain. Don’t be shy.

Get yourself a cooler lay yourself low
Coincidental murder with nothing to show
The judge’s constipation will go to his head
And his wife’s aggravation, you’ll soon end up dead

I just finished a book wherein the ending came way too soon for me. I was so disappointed, because I thought I had a whole ‘nother chapter to go, judging by the number of pages left. So I finish a chapter, anticipating the “wrap-up” that should begin as I turn the page, and find instead discussion questions and an excerpt of the author’s novel. It was over. Like that.

I understand the need to market the next book, but this actually made a black mark against the author in my mind. Even though the book was fantastic the ending soured it for me. Because of where I expected it to end, I was reading that final chapter in a different way than the author intended. She knew it was the end. I did not.

I re-read that last chapter as a last chapter, just to see if maybe I’d missed a change in pacing or rhythm, the subtle signs that the book was ending, and sure enough, they were there. I think the ending was still weak, but it definitely would have been stronger for me if I’d had the right expectations.

Is my reader in a loveless marriage, or did her boyfriend just say he loved her for the first time? Did the cover promise something I didn’t include in the book, or is the reader a writer himself with his own ideas of how to do things? Did my reader just get the death penalty?

You just never know.

The answer to all those questions is: I won’t know until I try. And so I begin.

I’ve spent the past two months adrift, a necessary thing, releasing old ideas about how this blog, my career, my relationships should be. I played at NaNoWriMo; wrote parts of books and stories, but nothing that lights my fire; joined OWFI and planned to enter their annual contest in several categories, and actually got quite a bit done in that direction; accepted the fact that crappy stuff happens all the time, and I have to learn how to write anyway.

I think I finally settled on a blog theme that works exactly how I need it to, and will build it over time. I might post writings here, stories that maybe aren’t worth trying to sell but still have some entertainment value. A new About Me page would be nice.

I’m accepting the fact that the blogging community has changed immensely since I started. It used to be the way I communicated all the parts of my life, but I have Facebook for the more mundane stuff now. I used links and images, and I thought about SEO and getting the blog out there. That helped in the beginning, but dang… If you enter “Sherri Cornelius” into Google, Yahoo, and Bing, you will find this website in the top spot, not to mention various others of my hangouts in positions below that. I’m “out there”, mmkay?

The writing of the blog never bored me, but all the side work did, and I guess I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. I don’t want to imagine what I can make of this place, but to be surprised with what it becomes.