You’re a beginning writer and you’ve been writing and rewriting your manuscript. For some reason, the actual product doesn’t match in grandeur the masterpiece you had in your head when you started. The process of assembling the actual words, herding them together in some sort of order, made the whole resulting story seem more juvenile than you intended. Not juvenile as in ‘written for juveniles to read,’ but ‘written by a juvenile who nearly failed English.’
You could go through and edit your creation one more time in hopes that greatness will finally emerge, but you’ve done that already repeatedly and it hasn’t worked. It’s doubtful if one more edit will accomplish much. Besides, you’re getting a little sick of the thing. Your muse has flitted off, interested in different and ever newer pursuits.
Somewhere you’d heard that even the best writers let a manuscript sit for a time—a few weeks or even months—and then come back to it, able to look with a fresher eye. In your case that’s not an option, since today’s the deadline for the anthology for which you’re aiming. Or maybe you already did let the work sit for a while but it didn’t result in a better manuscript, just further loss of interest in the story. In either case, this opus isn’t going to get any better than it is right now.
So you sit staring at the monitor, looking at an e-mail you’ve written to the editor. The e-mail has your story attached—oh, you triple-checked that. The file with the story is in the format preferred by the editor, again triple-checked. The e-mail is short and upbeat. Everything is ready. All you have to do is click the ‘send’ button and your first-ever story will be on its way to an actual editor.
So what gives? Why the delay? It’s a single mouse click, for crying out loud. What happened to that boldness you felt when you couldn’t wait to charge in and start writing the story? Where’s that reckless abandon with which you stayed up until three in the morning last month to pound out the first draft of the final scene, typing “The End” in weary triumph? What’s happened to reduce that bravely audacious writer to a quivering mass of doubt, consumed with fear at the sight of a Send button?
What if, you keep thinking, the editor doesn’t like it? What if it’s the worst piece of tripe the editor has ever read? It would be bad to receive a rejection, but devastating if the editor replied with something like, “It was enough for me to endure your opening paragraph, and how I wish I could have that precious time back. I have many enemies, but none so vile that I would force them to read a single sentence of your work. Not only am I rejecting your story, but I beg you, for the good of humanity, to take up another hobby—any other hobby.”
It’s that and a thousand similar scenarios that keep your finger poised above, but never quite clicking, the mouse button that would send your first story on its way. I’ll write about dealing with rejections in a future blog post, but in this case you’re rejecting the story yourself before you even send it in.
Would it help if I told you that every writer goes through that the first time? What if I said that no self-respecting editor ever sends a rejection full of personal put-downs like you imagined? How about if I told you it’s only this first submission that causes such angst, that all the rest are far easier?
Since you face an irrational fear, one of your own making, there’s no works-every-time cure I can offer. However, I suggest you dig deep inside yourself. Remember when you started this quest? You wanted to find out if you could be a writer, if you have what it takes. This little moment of truth is part of the process, part of the writing game.
Chances are this submission will result in rejection, but that won’t deter the writer within you. Oh, no, that inner writer will instead be spurred on, intent to do better next time. That would-be (no, will-be!) author inside you laughs at rejections, even prints them out and saves them as badges of honor. That confident scribbler within you knows that one day the act of submitting stories will be routine. And on that day you’ll look back on this first moment of indecision and laugh.
So click ‘send,’ brave writer! Hold your creation—your baby—aloft so the world can see. You can do it. I did, and survived. As always, write to me here if you have some reaction to this post. Now well past that first, worst click, I call myself—
Poseidon’s Scribe
