_____Here's my plan. I'm giving up on submitting items to literary agents and publishers. That's it. Twelve years of rejection, and enough's enough. I'm going to do a quick-line finish to my current trashy comic sci-fi novel. Meanwhile, weeks in advance before the actual typing, I'll be working on plans for one of the most heart-felt novels I've ever written before. It's going to be something very much in line with what Stephen King did with his break-out novella and what Stephanie Meyer has been doing. But at the same time, it's going to be the sort of science fiction novel that hasn't been written for at least the past thirty years. You go into any bookstore, go online, go anywhere, and you'll be hard-pressed to find the same thematic subject matter. But I'm not going to tell you. No way am I going to let New York's publishers get wind of my novel-to-be and hire some hack to give it a quickie treatment. Nope, given its thirty-year absence from mainstream publishing, the subject matter of my next novel deserves a full and proper work done right. _____Here's a little background. The word WHATEVER just about sums up how I'm feeling about New York and the mainstream publishing industry. For goodness sakes, I've been submitting items to New York's publishing industry for twelve years now. The rejections have started to hurt recently, and a dude can only take so much. Take suggestions, listen to writers, attend writing conventions, attend writer's gatherings, submit, submit, and submit, there is nothing that I have not done to try to get published in the mainstream press. So, I'm giving up trying to get published through New York's publishing empires. Are you happy, New York? I'm in retreat. Twelve years of rejections, and you've won. I just won't submit anything to you anymore. With that region-locked, New Yorkers-only attitude of yours, good luck finding the next Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer or J.K. Rowling. In other words, I'm saying, WHATEVER. _____That doesn't mean I'm done with writing. A writer is never done. Twelve years of composing novels means that I have it down to a technology. Don't say "science," because science is more about discovery and theory than practice and skill. I won't submit to New York, but that doesn't mean New York is the only game in town. New York's publishing executives can't regulate who gets to sit down at a word-processing computer. In fact, given the garbage coming out of TOR that passed for sci-fi these past twenty years, maybe New York's execs ought to ban some of their own. Given the rise of self-publishing and the drastic closure of bookstores in New England, maybe the so-called amateurs are getting better while the published professionals are getting worse. I'm not done and won't be in this life, writing being the ability to craft lives on paper. Who the Hell would give up that kind of power? Okay, I'll probably be back tomorrow.
You shouldn't give on publishing completely. Throwing away a novel because of a crappy publishing company is silly. Maybe you should try to publish in another state online? I don't know but another place sounds reasonable to me. New York probably gets so much entries they don't even read half of them.
Welcome to Writing Forums, Eliot! I hope you find what you're looking for here, whatever your interests in writing. This forum aims to provide the best workshopping resources on the internet, and to that end we have a few rules which you should familiarise yourself with before you get stuck in. The main section of the site is the Writing Workshop, where members can post their writing in order to receive critique of their work. However, before we allow members to post their work, they must have met some basic requirments. Firstly, you must have been a member for fourteen days, and have made twenty posts on the forum overall (please note, posts in Word Games do not count towards this). This is so that members, when they post their work, have familiarised themselves with the forums and contributed to them (as well as hopefully learned something for themselves). Secondly, members must provide two constructive reviews of other people's work for each piece of their own that they wish to post. This is because we believe that the focus of workshopping should be equally upon giving reviews as receiving them, as they allow a writer to practice and improve their editing skills, which they can then apply to their own writing. Beyond the Writing Workshop, you will find that we have extensive forums for discussion of aspects of writing, as well as a community area for general discussion. We also run periodic short story and poetry contests, which are good for challenging yourself and expanding your skills. If you have any questions or problems, then the moderators (myself, Cogito, Lemex and Dante Dases) should be your first port of call. Any technical problems with the site itself should be directed to Daniel, the site administrator and owner. I would recommend you have a look over the rules so that you know what to expect, and what is expected. But aside from that, I hope you enjoy your time here. Banzai
_____Fullmetal Xeno, I used to hate throwing out a whole novel, but that was only when I had maybe four novels under my belt... Er, make that, under my hard drive. Okay, make that ON my hard drive. One writing professor I studied under said that editing, revising, or even throwing away one's own work at that level can feel like killing one's own children. Now, come to think of it, killing one's literary offspring is somewhat easy when there have been over two dozen. Of course, this is talking figuratively. I'm NOT advocating the murder of real kids. That is, until we can get 'em to participate in televised mortal combat like in that Japanese novel BATTLE ROYALE or that little-known thing called HUNGER GAMES. (Kidding!) Maybe it's like how, in those societies where people make a dozen babies for the sake of tradition, life seems cheaper? _____And to everbody, thanks for the return comments, dudes and due-ettes. I didn't want to come off sounding like a scumbag. Thing is, I'm trying really, REALLY hard to keep things civilized, at least trying to not go all medieval on everybody on earshot when it comes to writing. And, thanks for not sound like scumbags in turn. There were these past writing forums I visited where they were all like, "Well, you didn't get published because YOU SUCK." Then again, some of them were sucking when they made their comments on my works--all kinds of mechanical and technical errors in their composition. Yup, I used to be an educator; some things matter when it comes to English composition. Then there are some professional publishers and writers who are borderline psychotic when it comes to getting things right by them--what they want to see in every line, on every single page, for over two hundred pages. While about half of the published and publishing professionals I've personally met in the past are approachable and reasonable, the other half are serious wackos in terms of standards. It's not the normal people in writing and publishing that have gotten to me these past twelve years. It's the wackos. Thanks for not being wackos, and I'll try not to end up being one myself. Now I'll go see what else there is to see.
Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, Eliot. Passionate artists scare the hell out of people. Go for broke.
