I’ve mentioned the novella I’d been working on a few times on this webpage. I’ve also mentioned that I was using it as the basis for a novel. At one point I even wrote that I thought it was the best thing that I’d ever written. However I knew there were problems with it. I could sense them with each rewrite I did, but having lived so close with the story for so long, couldn’t pin them down. So when the opportunity to send the manuscript to a professional editor came along, I jumped at it.
Her advice (summarized): I’d done nothing right, from the characters on through. I should scrap it.
I was building a novel on top of this. 40+K words already written. A character I’d been writing off and on about since I was in high school. Years of study. Hours of work. Scrap it. I was an architect building a house on a rotten foundation and a ground of shifting sand. Scrap it.
I was not angry at the editor. She’d done her job. This is not a “BuT THeY dOn’t UNDerStaNd MY GENIUS! type post. I don’t think I have the ego for that anymore. This is a “I’ve fucked up. Now what?” post.
I can’t stress this enough, but I was not angry. Lost is a better word. She’d stripped away the hazy veneer of dream from my work to reveal an ugly reality. Imagine opening your eyes to find yourself miles deep in the cold, crushing depths of the ocean. Your arms and legs don’t work. You can’t breathe. Which way do you swim?
I’ve described rejection before like being dumped by someone you love. I really think its the closest thing to it. Your throat tightens up. Your stomach twists. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. Anytime you see or hear anything that remotely inspired you to write you are overcome with the desire to throw up until you die of dehydration. And on top of all that there is the embarrassment. I just sent something I felt was my best work to someone I admire, and they found it lacking.
Had I not the knowledge that I’d just been accepted into Metastasis, there is a chance that I would have said, “Good game, Life!”, put my yearbook copy of Sidekicks! on a shelf, and gone back to a life of playing MMOs and binge drinking on the weekends.
That didn’t happen. Instead, I got drunk. I watched my favorite film (Blade Runner). I got some sleep, and then I hung out with friends. The novel was dead, but story ideas started to come back to me. If the novel is shit, perhaps I can grow something new out of its compost?
Why did I write this? Because talking about it helps. I still feel pain and embarrassment. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, yet. The voices that scream, “You suck, Lickman!” whenever I write just got reinforcements.
I’m torn. Part of me is saying, “I need to think.” Yet another is saying, “No. I need to dream.”