Author’s Note: This post is not intended to pass judgment on the books currently being marketed as romantasy or their readers. I support the incorporation of sex positive books into the fantasy market and have always been a huge proponent of this. It is, however, a reflection on the continued narrow mindset that we use to view and sell books and how that mindset continues to hurt marginalized communities.
This is simply my opinion and is not intended to represent the view of any individual or group besides myself. For ease of understanding, I write both YA and Adult Fantasy in the traditional publishing space and am agented but unpublished (as of yet). The following post is a reflection primarily on the Adult Fantasy space but does discuss how YA and Adult intertwine.
Once upon a time, I would have said to you my adult fantasy books were “romantasy.” I would have said that because I believed it to be true. They were a blending of the fantasy and romance genres that still belonged primarily under the fantasy arm. I would also have said this because romantasy was, and continues to be, extremely popular.
Now, you’re more likely to find me calling my books fairytale retellings for grownups.
I’ve broken up with romantasy.
To be honest, I was always a little nervous about calling my books romantasy to begin with. When my agent and I first set this label to my fairytale retelling about a godmother who hated her job, the romantasy moniker was relatively new to the traditional publishing scene. It wasn’t well defined. It still isn’t well defined.
Is it a fantasy that has a strong romantic element or a romance that has a strong fantasy element? Does it require open door, on the page sex? How much? What heat level must it be to be considered romantasy? Is there a real difference between romantasy and fantasy romance? Or romantic fantasy? Where are the lines? What shelf does it go on?
As a neurodiverse individual who spends her days elbow-deep in contracts “not well defined” is not a thing I love.
However, somewhat arrogantly, I thought perhaps I could be one of the trailblazers to define this space.
Spoiler alert: I didn’t. I also have no track record to have ever thought that would be a real ambition. Still, I believed, as so many people do, that romantasy must mean what I wanted it to mean, and it made sense to throw my book into the ring even if it maybe didn’t belong there.
What I wanted romantasy to be was a fantasy-first story with a strong romantic subplot. A book with a pretty hardcover that sat next to Gaiman and Martin and Tolkien. A grown-up version of much of the young adult fantasy you see on the shelves today. Something dealing with grown-up problems (like hating your job and dastardly exes) in grown-up ways (rage quitting and revenge sex) while still maintaining the fantastic elements, fast pace, character-driven plots, and light worldbuiding of YA fantasy.
Like so many, I’d grown out of YA. Insta love and pining wasn’t doing it for me anymore. Nor were love interests who were minors. The days of messy childhood dramas were past. My friends are my allies, my foundation, not my competition. I’m a busy, Millennial woman working in software, usually between 60-80 hours a week. I have a mortgage, a family, responsibilities and appointments to run in and out of. The days of locking myself in my room for a week during spring break to read, only emerging for popcorn and soda, were gone. Now, my fingers ofen find the smallest book on my TBR, not the largest.
YA fantasy no longer offered what I wanted. But neither did adult fantasy, where the books were too long, too dark, too political, too sprawling. I hated maps, and countries, and a million languages and thirteen POVs I couldn’t remember, and flipping back and forth to try to remind myself who was who.
So I set out to write what I wanted. A grown up YA-esque fantasy fit for the adult fantasy shelf and the (now) adult fantasy reader craving something different.
Here’s where I guess I went sideways. Because I didn’t set out to write a romantasy as it existed. I set out to write a thing I personally wanted to read. Romantasy as it existed was a much sexier fantasy than I’ll likely ever write. It became even sexier as the subgenre evolved (and my book moved through submission).
I wasn’t writing for a genre, I was writing for something I thought was missing in the genre. A fantasy with sex in it, sure. A fantasy with a romantic subplot, but a fantasy first. I thought this would fit into the romantasy category, but what I received on submission was a lot of “this is great but it doesn’t fit… anywhere.”
My books aren’t about six pack abs and heat level. I don’t know how spicy they are. I’m touch averse. The fact they contain sex is a miracle in and of itself. The reason they do is a statement. Sex in my books is about reclaiming my power, about seizing female agency and saying, “This goes here, too. We go here, too.” It’s about showing things through a lens I never got to view sex. One that is not as fantastical as my favorite books once had me believe.
But at the end of the day, my books are more about friendship. And power. They’re about breaking down walls and rewriting problematic faves.
I write them because I believe fantasy deserves to have more than grim dark and sword and sworcery and urban darkness. I believe it deserves to have more lightness and simplicity in world building. But I believe romantasy now deserves more, too. Love deserves more. It deserves to be represented in more ways than heat level, and an endless run of tropes, and how many times you can have open door sex in 90,000 words. It deserves to be seen in friendships, and undiscovered sexuality, and self-love, and asexuality, and found family, and redemption, and parents trying and failing, and sex being a place of healing but never healed.
Romantasy deserves a definition. And a place on the FANTASY shelf that is as wide as the genre it’s named after.
Until then, though, I’m breaking up with it.
Until then, I write fairytales for grownups (and the occassional YA).
Author’s Note: Blog posts have been infrequent lately because I’ve undergone two spine surgeries in a month and also because engagement is way down. (Hello? Is anyone reading these anymore? I will shamelessly admit I miss the dopamine your likes and comments brought me.) But onward we go anyway. Why? I guess this is part my journal and part me trying to keep up some kind of presence for, well, reasons I’m sorta about to discuss.
CW/TW: Discussion of pressure to out one’s identity, diet culture, EDs (including specifically anorexia and binge eating disorder), social media pressures, and the like.
Additional note on CW/TWs regarding EDs:While I am someone who has personally struggled with the listed EDs, I am not a monolith and my experience does not represent the only possible experience. In this piece, I’ve attempted to recognize the toxicity of diet culture while also accurately representing my own messy but true-to-me feelings. I ask you to consider this difficult balance, my imperfections, and your own health before proceeding.
The Dream I Dreamed as a Tween…
When I was a tween, I read an interview with one of my favorite authors though I cannot for the life of me remember which one. I searched online but couldn’t find it, so maybe I made it up. Who knows. That’s not important. What’s important is the story held in my heart all those years. And that goes something like this…
On the plane home from her most recent book tour, an author found herself sitting next to an unassuming businessman. Neatly dressed and pressed, with a briefcase tucked under the arms of his navy blue suit, she had no reason to believe he was anything more than a randomly assigned stranger she’d share this space but no words with before deplaning.
As the plane took flight, the businessman retrieved a broken-spined paperback from his bag. With a practiced hand, he closed and buckled the briefcase, then placed the book on the sturdy leather. Paper crackled as he ran a hand over the book’s middle to smooth it down, settling into his read.
Always interested in what people were reading, the author peeked over. Her chest tightened as she struggled to keep her face neutral and her mouth shut. Her book. It was one of her books.
While her heart pounded so loud in her ears she was sure it’d moved there, she debated her next move. Saying nothing seemed the safest path, less awkward for both of them and less painful for her if he hated the book. She took another quick glance. He didn’t look like he was much past chapter three. Lots of room for him to already hate it but not enough for many readers to have given up quite yet. Saying nothing really did make the most sense.
But as she reached for a book within her crocheted purse, the man licked his lips and turned a page. The motion drew her eye. He seemed too intent to say nothing. So, she said, quiet enough he could pretend he hadn’t heard her, “What are you reading?”
The man looked up. Without hesitation, he gave the author her own name.
She tilted her head as though this was a new set of words and not the name she’d heard called a thousand, thousand times across living rooms and down steps, echoing off grand train station walls, and crackly airport speakers. “Is she any good?”
The man paused, eyebrows turning in as though thinking hard. Meanwhile, the author’s stomach wiggled like a worm on a hook. Why had she done this foolish thing? What a silly, reckless thing to do, spoiling both their otherwise ordinary plane rides.
Before her stomach could really get to squirming, though, the man said, “She is!” Then, sheepish over his own exuberance, he coughed lightly and added a diplomatic, “I think so, anyway. I read everything she writes.”
A little sigh of relief swept from the author’s lips as her brow crinkled in time with her conspiratorial wink toward this stranger who was at present her favorite person in all the world. “I’m glad you think so. She is me.”
When I read this story, I knew without a doubt this is what I wanted for my future. To be a sort of Quiet Famous. To be someone who brings people joy, who is admired, who pursues her craft, all without the stress and worry of true celebrity. Because honestly, who looks at dust jackets and back of book covers and remembers the author’s face?
A life of freedom and choice. What a simple, beautiful thing.
Take a deep breath and enjoy the happy zen moment. Per usual, I’m about to smash it with a reality hammer.
BookTok: A Brief Introduction
That life is dead. Not only for me but for many (most?) authors. The days of selective anonymity are over. The once upon a time story where you might be the kind of writer where your only job is to disappear into the woods with your cats, emerging every ten years or so with your Next Bestseller (but only after your agent proved their loyalty to you by going on a quest to retrieve you first) is just that. A fairytale. (Okay, yes, that one probably always was.) And while I feel as though I’ve spent the past decade or more watching these author dreams die little by little, nothing has made the knell sound so loud as the rise of #BookTok.
For anyone who might still be reading this who doesn’t know what BookTok is (hi, friends and family, you’re heroes!), it’s basically the corner of TikTok where books are discussed, dissected, and ultimately, defined.
There have been social media trends specific to the book community before, of course, like #bookstagram and #booktwitter but I would argue none have made near to the same impact on actual book sales and thus, author futures, as BookTok.
I used to be very active on #bookstagram but stopped participating when it became all about Reels, not photos (soooo basically BookTok but less popular. Sorry, Meta. Truth hurts, doesn’t it?)
Every author, agent, and editor I know is talking about TikTok. How to TikTok, TikTok follower and view count, TikTok envy, TikTok tutorials, author responsibility for being on TikTok, TikTok popularity, TikTok problematic content, TikTok fame pulling authors from the dregs of unknown to household name with the seven figure net worth to go with it (Colleen Hoover anyone?). Debuts fretting over their very first TikTok video because it has to count, TikTok branding of yourself, your books, your worlds, your fanclubs, TikTok influencers and how to get them to notice you, TikTok influencers signing book deals for amounts no author ever dreamed of, which press knows which influencers, entire new presses springing up seemingly overnight, ready to hit the ground running with sales, marketing, and distribution models all orbiting around influencers and their millions of viewers.
TikTok. TikTok. TikTok.
I hear a clock and another dream has ticked its last.
Before BookTok: Changing Landscapes and Dying Dreams
Before BookTok, I stood still, watching while the landscape shifted into one where authors have to market ourselves as much, if not more, than our books. Time and time again, we’re asked to out ourselves, dox ourselves, deadname ourselves, force our truths into a box that isn’t always neat or pretty or non-problematic yet make it look that way. Perfect. We have to be perfect in our representations of our own lived experiences, so we don’t accidentally contradict someone else’s similar but different lived experience. But we also have to make sure people know we’re not speaking for everyone, only ourselves. We should get sensitivity readers even for our own experiences in case we have ingrained isms, then edit based on that. While also writing what we know and staying in our lanes. But we can’t rely on these readers any more than we can rely on ourselves, because disclaimer, no one is a monolith. So we do our best to give ourselves. But not our whole selves. Our watered down selves that better fit a version that would apply to more people, more readers, more revenue. Except no, we don’t do that.
Or do we?
Maybe it took me too long to get anywhere worth getting to. I’m getting old and tired. Too tired to keep up. But I’ve been pushing so hard for so long I continue out of habit. I have no idea if this new landscape even feels like my old dream, never mind if it could ever become a new dream.
What I do know is sometimes it feels like it moves so quickly I’m not sure I have time to evaluate whether it’s something I want, and sometimes it moves so slowly I’m not sure I want to keep throwing my years, like coal, into the fire of this wasteful machine.
TikTok. TikTok. TikTok.
See also, those melting clocks by Dali. Pretty sure that’s what the inside of my brain looks like right now.
Before Booktok, we were asked to go on journeys of self-exploration but not to better our craft. No. To find an identity to sell. Never mind if we wanted to, if we were ready to, if we were mature enough, or stable enough, or emotionally able. Never mind if we went and found and wanted to cradle our precious new thing to our heart as it crooned to us things we never knew about ourselves. Sell the precious new thing, we were told as arms from everywhere and nowhere stretched out, ripping it from us. No matter the cost or toll. No matter if we’re left alone, confused and stripped bare. This is capitalism. We should, in fact, be grateful to sell anything to anyone. Books, ourselves, doesn’t matter. A sale is a sale, the check cashes the same (the author’s in 3-4 installations over 2-3 years). We should be glad the robots aren’t here to replace us yet. Sniveling things are we. Shut up and quit complaining. Write faster, faster, faster. Sell faster, faster, faster. Our identities, our traumas, our histories, our dignity, our hearts, our souls. But don’t forget to make all that ugly Instaworthy first.
The reason for sale is good, though. And that matters. Like representation matters. I might not have been the quickest person to understand it, and there are elements and nuances of it that still puzzle and enrage me at times, but the fundamentals are right. Sound. Ethical. Moving toward progress. Representation matters and inauthentic representation has done damage. To correct that damage, some proving is demanded. If the end result is hurting as few people as possible, I’ll do extra legwork every time.
But this new thing? With the branding and the camera presence and the selfie sticks and the lack of attention on anything that lasts longer than 34 seconds or so?
This feels like publishing wants me to sell something in a one step forward, two steps backward type of way, and I’m not loving the impact it’s having on the way I see myself or my art.
The Rise of BookTok (and its Pressure)
Most of the BookTok influencing isn’t done by a book’s author. It’s done by, well, influencers. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the chatter amongst authors, agents, editors, and other publishing professionals about all things TikTok. It also doesn’t stop authors from being asked about their TikTok presence by everyone higher up the food chain from them (which is for most authors, everyone in publishing). It doesn’t stop the fear when huge deals are announced for TikTok influencers’ books. Nor does it stop the feelings of, “That could have been me;” “That should have been me;” “That will never be me.”
The success is amazing for them. I just think holding others (or yourself) to anything near this is about as unrealistic as, well, TikTok.
We all know, logically, that the algorithm can’t be manipulated as easily as every person peddling a course on how to do it would make it seem. (Sidenote: my day job is in software please don’t @ me on this). But you can’t win if you don’t play, so there’s immense pressure to get in the BookTok game even if you don’t have time, energy, or interest.
“I can’t handle one more social media” is a refrain you’ll hear often in the author community, followed shortly by the opening of another account on TikTok, Bluesky, Threads, Youtube.
My spicy take? Authors should be allowed to spend their precious little free time content creating real live books. It’s already hard enough. They don’t pay us nearly enough for this kind of side hustle. (They don’t pay a lot of us at all.)
These are churned and chewed topics of conversation, though. What I really want to get at, now that my Bad News about my last book is out, is how BookTok pressure is making it harder and harder for me to write real books.
The Fall of My Self-Esteem
Let me get this out of the way. This has nothing to do with publishers or my agent. These are only my thoughts. My messy. Maybe I’m writing this because I’m hoping someone will read it (long as it is) and tell me they think some of these things, too. Maybe we’ll collectively be less alone. Maybe it’ll make someone realize this is a pointless cycle of self-destruction and help them find their way out. Maybe I’ll simply have a few dopamine hits when you push the like button. Whatever it does after, it does, in some ways, start with submission of my first book.
The first time my agent and I discussed TikTok, shortly after my first book had gone on submission, fae made it very clear I had no obligation whatsoever to participate, for which I will be eternally grateful.
Unfortunately, there was no amount of assurance fae could give me to convince me my TikTok abstinence wouldn’t really be a problem if my book sold, maybe even before then. The deals and debuts told me otherwise. My own failures told me otherwise. Hell, my friends told me otherwise. When I commented in writing groups that I didn’t understand the joke or topic because I didn’t know x, y, z influencer I got responses like, “Oh, you know her.” I didn’t. The insistence that I must and derision that followed swathed me in shame. I was behind again.
Like so many of my peers, I stressed over whether TikTok might be the final ingredient to get me over the line of Not Quite Good Enough into Made It.
Quickly on the heels of that thought came several others. BookTok would never work for me. I wasn’t pretty enough, thin enough, young enough, or likable enough for the medium. Nor am I a 21-34 second summary kind of gal, if you couldn’t tell.
Knowing at this point that I will never be able to fix my age or my neurodiversity, I set to obsessing about weight loss. That would have to come before any BookTok debut. After all, all I’d been hearing was how important that very first video would be.
I’ve struggled with weight, body image issues, and eating disorders my entire life. The feeling I get from restricting food intake is the same feeling I get from binge eating is the same feeling I used to get drinking. They’re all addictions, and I have an addict brain. Moderation is not a thing I do well. I’m either at 150% or so burned out I’ve forgotten my name and what day of the week it is.
And because you can’t quit food, my body and I spiral and cycle. Snap. Anorexia—down to 107 pounds. Snap. Binge eating—up to 230 pounds. Snap. Anorexia—down to 118 pounds. Snap. Binge eating—up to 200 pounds. Snap. Scales purchased then pitched then purchased again.
On and on it goes. The addictions I can’t seem to kick. Always waiting for the next snap. Never able to fully convince myself I believe it when I say “fuck diet culture.”
Needless to say, BookTok hasn’t been hugely helpful for my mental or physical health. And I’m not alone. Research has shown that women who watch influencers are less happy with their face while men show increased body anxiety. Source (with additional sources within). The algorithms, with TikTok’s being widely recognized as one of the most powerful, play on the very dopamine cycles I’ve been joking about during this blog (which was on purpose, yes), creating a nasty cycle of anxiety spiraling all their own.
The Center for Humane Technology, where this is from, is doing great work if you don’t know them. You can also check out the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma for more info.
At the time my last book went on submission, I was at arguably the healthiest weight of my life, somewhere around 145 pounds. Moderated. Controlled. Neither binging nor restricting. Neither overexercising or laying around too much.
Enter the BookTok pressure.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d been watching my friends go through this, struggling with the concepts of some of it myself, but submission made it all too real. My agent said I didn’t have to worry about it, but not getting on TikTok meant possibly losing an easy ticket to the top. It was time for me to enter the fray. And while part of my mind (I almost wrote the logical part of my mind but checked myself) said “lose weight” the greater part of it said, “Impending doom. Bunker down and eat everything.”
Snap. Back to 200 pounds.
A damaged spine.
Morbidly obese, they said.
Can you walk up half a flight of steps without getting winded? they asked.
TikTok. TikTok. TikTok.
Beyond the noise, a memory floated to me like a sheet on the wind. An interview I hadn’t thought about in years. The dream I had. The one that perservered through so many failures and rejections. Here it was, smashed upon the surface of authors being forced to become a brand. I remembered too my writing professors scolding me, urging me to let my stories speak for themselves. Yet now here we were, living in a world where other people spoke for our stories. Spoke for our pain, our traumas, our identities, our histories, our sexualities, our 90,000 word journeys of self-discovery all summed up in perfect 34 second snippets about tropes and heat levels.
Everything I’d learned was upside down. Things that were moving too fast skidded to a hault. I stopped reading, stopped writing, stopped engaging with other authors, stopped telling people I was a writer. I tried to regain momentum. In truth I’m still trying, but it feels like dragging lead. Or perhaps more accurately, like dragging 50 pounds of my own dead weight.
I have nothing left to sell. Not even myself. Because I’m not skinny enough for BookTok.
Note from Aimee: Today’s post has query statistics at the end for those interested. They follow a picture (which picture and alt text was inserted by me, not the author of this post) so they can be more easily avoided for those who don’t like to see stats. The book referenced in this post is described by the author as an adult, second-world grimdark fantasy and is the first novel written by them. I have also included links to the resources listed by the author, but neither this post nor my inclusion of links is an official endorsement of either (and no one was paid to put them here) and you should always research any paid service carefully before pursuing it. Now, without further ado, today’s amazingly raw, amazingly written, amazingly brave story of realness ❤
What if You Just Wrote the Wrong Book?
By: Anonymous
I knew the book I spent 4 years writing was a no-hoper before I ever sent my first query. I knew it as soon as I looked at agent MSWLs in my genre, as soon as I followed agents on Twitter, as soon as I looked for comps. I also know the book I just shelved is the best book I will ever write.
As a child, I had vague ambitions of becoming a published writer, for the simple reason that I wanted to achieve something in life and wasn’t good at anything else. But financial stability came first, and so I devoted my teens and 20s to academics and demanding jobs, writing only a few short stories over 10 years. It wasn’t until I managed to downshift to a 40-hour-a-week job that didn’t suck up all my mental energy that I had hope of actually finishing a novel. Even then, I struggled to find a work-in-progress I loved enough to stick with–until finally I did.
Finishing that monster of a 135k first draft (later whittled down to 121k) took me almost 4 years. Coming to the end and actually being proud of what I’d written was the most joyful moment of my life to date–until I got on the internet and realized I’d written the exact book nobody wanted.
My book might have been perfect for the SFF market in, say, 2010. But by 2022, my European military fantasy was exactly what agents in this hugely oversaturated market were begging not to see (which, if I’d been reading recent debuts instead of spending years frantically trying to finish my own book, I would already have known). Readers’ tastes had long since changed, but I was still writing for the teenager I’d been.
My book was second-world and epic when everyone wanted “grounded.” It had three POVs and a heaping of military strategy when everyone wanted intimate and character-driven. It was a bloody grimdark hitting every conceivable trigger warning when a lot of readers were hungry for lightness, romance, and hope. And worst of all, it had a female villain protagonist who sought power not to protect loved ones or to fight oppression but for power’s own sake–and thus was really, truly unlikeable to everyone but me.
I decided to query my book anyway, because what did I have to lose? I left off anyone for whom my book was explicitly anti-MSWL (quite a few), but between US and UK agents, I still had a healthy list to burn.
I came prepared. I scoured r/pubtips, submitted my query to the wonderful Query Shark, and paid far too much for a manuscript assessment by a freelance editor, because I wanted an honest opinion and was worried seeking unpaid betas would take months and plunge me into social media drama. The verdict: the editor couldn’t understand why anyone would write this sort of thing, and also I needed therapy.
But by far my most valuable investments were three, 10-minute query and sample chapter consultations with literary agents through Manuscript Academy (US) and Jericho Writers (UK). This is the best $49 you as a writer will ever spend, because it is the only time a professional in your target market will tell you exactly what you did wrong, as opposed to just hitting the reject button.
The agents I spoke to were lovely individuals who put real thought into explaining why, no matter how much I revised my query package or my manuscript as a whole, a book with this premise would never sell. Then, much more difficult, they tried to give me some guidance on what would.
Now, 10 months out, I’m at the end of the query journey for the book of my heart. I’m proud of the requests I received, and not at all surprised that they ended in silence or form rejections, given that the book only gets really controversial halfway through. I’m heartened by a few one-liners praising my prose, which I was afraid was too literary and historical for the current market. I’ve also done some thinking about what I need to do to improve my craft: tighten pacing, narrow my scope, and manage word count better as I go.
But as a thirtysomething woman (seemingly ancient for a debut), I can’t figure out for the life of me what to write next. It doesn’t help that I’m the sort of person who takes years to write one book, while most agented writers appear to have churned out a first draft every few months since age 14. Every time I come up with a new premise for a novel, I stumble over the same hurdles. Is this original? Is this “hooky?” Can I imagine one of the 15 acquiring editors in my target market actually acquiring this? Is this–above all–marketable?
I don’t want this post to sound like I feel somehow aggrieved. I’m in the same position as every other casualty of the query trenches, except that I’m privileged to have money and time and not to have to cope with the additional struggles marginalized writers face. Against reason, I still dream of getting an agent and a tradpub deal someday. But writing for the market has killed the joy of writing for me.
Image and alt text added by Aimee, query stats redacted from the post and follow. Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay
Query Statistics as Provided by Author:
Adult second-world grimdark fantasy
Query start date: April 2022
Queries sent: 86
Partial Requests: 1 (rejected)
Full Requests: 7 (4 form rejections, 2 pending, 1 ghost)
2023 Update: This post was originally posted in 2019. It was the last post on my website before I shut it down. Now that I reactivated it to tell my very own How I Got My Agent story, it seemed fitting I leave this here as well, as a reminder. This is not always (or often) an easy journey.
Trigger/Content Warning:This post is sad. It is coming from a really dark place and is my mental illness speaking through me. If you’re not in a good place for that kind of dark content, please tread no further, I would never want the expression my mental health to hurt someone else’s.
You know the posts about How I Got My Agent? A lot of your favorite authors have them on their website. Most of them are stories of victory over adversity. They’re about the pains of the querying trenches all being worth it. They’re about how there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. They’re really cool and often so inspiring.
This post isn’t that.
I’ve been crying for three days. I can’t stop. Every time I think I have it under control, it starts again. My throat burns, and I’m having trouble breathing my sinuses are so choked. I can’t sleep, can’t taste the food I eat. When I go to the gym, I end up sobbing so hard I can’t keep going. The other day after another unsuccessful workout, I curled into a ball on the yoga mat I was stretching on and fell asleep. Things aren’t good with me.
I’ve been rejected. Again. From Pitch Wars, again. For the third time. It’s a new manuscript but the same results. This book was a bright and shiny beacon I was so, so proud of. But I was proud of the last one, too. And it was rejected twice from Pitch Wars and received 27 form rejections or spots of silence after that. The last manuscript didn’t receive a single request from a single agent I submitted to. It seems like this one is headed down the same path.
After I was sure I wasn’t going to be getting into Pitch Wars, I braved the querying trenches once more. I want this so bad. And this manuscript, I assured myself, is different. It’s special. It’s so much of me that someone has to see it for what it is. I have worked so fucking hard.
Not hard enough. I received my first form rejection within 24 hours of sending the first query. Here we go again.
I laid under my desk at my day job where I work as a paralegal, surrounded by smart people I really like but who I’m so jealous of because they will always be more important and make more money than me because they have a piece of paper I don’t, and I wept. And when one of my coworkers found me, I blamed my period and ran to the bathroom to continue crying alone.
This isn’t my period. I haven’t gotten my period in three years. The doctors say it’s stress. Stress I put on myself, or the world puts on me, I can’t be sure anymore. So no, this isn’t that. This is something else. This is the raw, ripe, stinging pain of rejection after rejection after rejection with no shining hope at the end of the tunnel. I am not good enough. I will never be good enough. I am what I am and what I am is not sufficient.
No one tells you about this part. No one records it. It’s not hopeful or pretty or tied neatly with an HEA and a bright red bow at the end. It’s bad for your look to look like no one wants you. But it’s the truth. And if I had a brand, which I don’t because you need to have a product to have a brand, it would be truth.
Here’s the truth. We aren’t all going to get agents and book deals. There are far more of us than there are of them. We aren’t all going to be able to live the dream and make enough money writing to quit our day jobs and pursue our passion. So we need to have contingent dreams. If I could give any young writer advice it would be that: Have another dream. Have something else to care about. Have something else to pay your bills and sate your passion. Search for it if you have to. Demand it of yourself, even if it doesn’t come naturally, even if you’re sure the only thing you’ll ever want is to be a writer. Find. Something. Else.
For me, something else is photography and fostering kittens. Sometimes, something else can almost be my day job. But whatever it is for you, don’t let writing become who you are. Let it be part of you, but not all of you. Save some of you for you.
And when you’re down, find a way to get back up, no matter how hard it is.
Author’s Note: I know I promised this blog yesterday, but it’s been hectic! But! Here it is, alive and well! It’s not edited well because I just flung it up in a rush, but I did the thing, which is great because this post is about YOU doing the thing!
For a good chunk of my writing career, I thought when people said, “Kill your darlings,” they meant that writers should kill their favorite characters. So I took that “advice” and ran with it. For awhile, I literally killed my favorite characters as a writing exercise, or a weird point of pride. Including at the end of romances, which um… did not go down well with romance readers (as it should not have, sorry, early readers at this life stage!)
I was younger then, and like a bright-eyed student thirsty for the knowledge of those older and therefore (I assumed) wiser than me, I took every bit of writing advice I could glean. When I had it, these gems, these treasures, these bits of knowledge that would surely make me Leigh Bardugo famous, I attempted to use them all.
As you might suspect (since I am not Leigh Bardugo famous), a lot of that advice has many interpretations and is quite subjective. A lot of it simply didn’t work for me. And if I’m honest, some if it made me really hate writing.
“Write what you know.” This is the oldest one in the book. Every writing student and aspiring author knows this one. “Write what you know” and “Show don’t tell” might be tattooed on the inside of my eyelids for how often they float through my mind.
I am not going to recreate what has already been done (both poorly and well) here. Google “Write what you know is wrong” and take everything you read with a grain of salt. Be especially careful about white dudes defending cultural appropriation for the sake of “art.” (Read: their Very Important™ writing). Not all of it is wrong, though. But “write what you know” can mean a lot of things. It doesn’t have to mean you can only write your memoir (although, if you have the urge to do that, do that, I need more memoirs to read!) “Write what you know” in the young adult spectrum might be more akin to, “Stay in your own lane” which I wrote about a few weeks ago. “Write what you know” could also mean that the most powerful writing you’ll do is when you’re writing about an experience that is intimately familiar to you. We all have unique experiences that only we can bring our perspective and voice to. But you also don’t have to do it all at once. “Write what you know” doesn’t have to be “Well, I’ve put every important thing on the page in this very first book and now I’m all dry and whatever will I do? I know nothing else!” Because I mean, that’s silly. We’re always experiencing and learning new things.
And now you’re probably wondering … wasn’t this post supposed to be about rule breaking? Why did you just spend 500 words defending The Rule? Well, partly it’s because when I was looking for a quote about writing what you know being flexible, I found all these articles about write what you know is wrong, and they espoused a lot of “cultural appropriation is okay for art,” and I got mad and had to come to The Rule’s defense. But it’s also partly because I wanted to make the point that all these “rules” are subjective. They can be used, and tossed aside, and bent, and broken, and rocketed into the sun strapped to a Tesla. As long as you have a book you’re proud of at the end, however long it takes you to get to that end, then you’ve done the thing!
Speaking of however long it takes, let me talk about one of the rules that isn’t that subjective and which I think is garbage (for me). Please keep in mind I mean in all of this for me. I always hesitate to give writing advice to anyone because everyone is so different. This advice is probably really helpful for some people. I have friends and professors and mentors who swear by it. But it doesn’t work for me, and I want to assure people here that if it doesn’t work for you, that is okay. You can still be a writer/author/creator without some a lot of this.
The advice goes thusly: “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” This quote is attributed to writer and activist Mary Heaton Vorse, but it has taken various forms across the years. Most of my writing professors used to advise taking at least one hour per day to write. To put your ass in the chair and get it done. To ground out words even if they sucked.
No shade to my professors, but as it turns out, academia makes a nice butt cushion. In my experience, 12-16 hour workdays don’t leave much time for the butt in chair exercise every day. My workdays start with household chores at 6:30 a.m. and don’t usually end until 8 p.m (on a good, 10 hours at work, workday). That doesn’t really leave much mental or physical energy for butt in chair time. I know people who get up even earlier to put their ass in a chair, and I admire that. But I have night terrors. If I go to bed at 11 p.m. and wake up at 6:30, with my nightmares, on a good night, I’ll be living on 5 hours of sleep. This is my life. Every day.
I’m not complaining, and I don’t want pity. It’s just my life, which is different than every other life. My life doesn’t have time for butt in chair exercises every day. That’s okay, though. As it turns out, I’ve been able to write 4 1/2 books in less than 4 years just writing when I can. Sneaking it in here and there when work is slow, taking days off solely to write, staying up late on days when I have the energy, putting a lot of time in on the weekends. But it’s not every day, and it isn’t consistent. Sometimes, I’ll go months without writing. I have to put food on my table and my primary job is what does that. No matter what though, I still get back to doing the thing.
And you can, too. You can do the thing. You don’t need every single “rule.” You can tell sometimes. Some stories need more telling than others. You don’t have to write every day. You can write stuff you don’t know (again, I mean like write about six-legged ponies, not cultural appropriation). You can write in tenses that aren’t active. You can throw jargon all over your damn page. You can write sentences so long even lawyers’ eyes will bug out at the sight of them. You can write how you want to write. It is your story and your voice and your art. There are really no “rules” to writing in the end. Only guidelines. Take what works for you and phooey on the rest.
That said, what is your favorite writing “rule” (especially if it’s one you’ve come up with for yourself?)
Aimee Davis 