I'm still a writer after all

Writing is a lot like being in a good relationship: has its ups and downs, but it’s worth fighting for

I’ve spent a lot of time recently trying to find and commit to a different creative outlet. Anything but writing. I needed to get away. Found a lot that I loved, a lot that I moderately enjoyed, and a lot that gave me grief one way or another.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s take a few steps back.

Earlier this year, I was one of the lucky few who won RevPit. (If you don’t know what RevPit is, you can read more about it on the Revise & Resub website.)

A few more steps back: last year, my fantasy novel won second place in the I AM Writing Sci-fi / Fantasy competition.

I also won a mentorship with WriteHive.

My cosy fantasy serial was shortlisted for a WattPad award and reached almost a thousand people.

Now you may be rolling your eyes and think I’m just boasting. But I swear there’s a point I’m getting to.

I can say with some confidence that the last 12 or so months have been my most successful of my writing career so far.

And yet, the last two months I’ve been madly searching for ways to give up writing. To find something else. Something that fulfills me and gives me the outcome I’ve been hoping from writing and never got. That elusive, undefinable feeling that I actually made it. Success. Results. Call it whatever you want. The feeling that your efforts were worthwhile.

It makes no sense on the surface. Wasn’t winning competition enough proof? Yet if I dig deeper, on so many other levels it makes perfect sense. Let’s unpack it all.

A moodboard for The Gravity of Hope, my RevPit novel

First of all, I’m still a writer whether I want to be or not

I make art. I have been making art in different forms for many years. Even when I think about sharing my art, I quickly realise that my favourite form of sharing my art process and results is using written words. A blog. A newsletter. Anything where I can still write. Because deep down, I’m still a writer.

Success comes in many forms and sometimes they aren’t what we’ve asked for

Am I grateful for the amazing things that happened to me over the last 12 months? I absolutely am. I’ve been applying for RevPit for four years, every year. I finally got in, and I will never be able to say enough thank you to my amazing editor. It’s been the greatest gift that’s happened to me on this journey towards a writing career.

But there’s an added pressure I feel now to secure an agent. I’ve already shelved a book that won an award. I shelved another that won me a mentorship. If my RevPit winner book cannot get me through the hurdle of securing representation, then what am I still doing?

I’m quitting. That’s what I’m doing.

Or at least that’s what my very panicky brain decided the right course of action is.

Do I really want to quit? Of course not. I have more book ideas than I can write in a lifetime. I want to be a novelist. I am a novelist. And yet. If I never turn those manuscripts into actual novels, then where does this road lead to?

The metrics aren’t working

Publishing isn’t a meritocracy. I’ve heard that many times. Even said it myself. Still, I often measure my own worth through pitch likes and full requests.

People like me—so many of us—watch our peers secure agents, and publishing deals, and we scream and cry with them genuinely happy for their success as we hold their published books in our hands and on our shelves. It’s the greatest joy in the world to be part of their success. To cheer them on.

Except maybe what it would feel like if it happened to us.

But in publishing, time isn’t a measure of our value either. It’s just a measure of luck. Yet knowing it doesn’t really help while we are waiting forever in limbo.

After a while, you may have enough people tell you that your writing is good that you start to believe it.

And you are still swiping off rejections from the lock screen, because years of experience with QueryTracker taught you to recognise a rejection without opening the email.

Every little bit of success—from competition wins to a kind full request—gets quickly buried and forgotten by just another double-rejection day.

Competition wins, awards, and even Revpit quickly start to feel like a fluke.

The magic dies under the pressure

Writing, especially coupled with querying sometimes feels like being in a relationship. After a while, the magic crumbles under the day-to-day of trying to build something that lasts. Yet, if we’re lucky, the love remains. It transforms into something more mature.

I listened to an artist’s talk recently who said gaining mastery in anything inevitably means that the passion for it declines. That by the time we get good enough at something to get paid for it, we’re likely to be over the first love and honeymoon phase, and we won’t feel that burning passion for that thing anymore. It becomes a job.

I love writing. No matter how much my brain screams at me to get out, because it wants to save me from the heartache of another rejection. Even more, it wants to save me from the absolute heartbreak and embarrassment of having to shelve another book, my RevPit-winner book, nonetheless. It doesn’t matter to this fearful weird brain that if I try to look at my query stats objectively these fears are completely unfounded. That I may not be a unicorn with 60% request rate—never will be—but this isn’t going that badly at all.

This is the fear that lives inside me, the fear I wake up every morning with and go to bed with every night.

That I will fail. Again.

But even if this didn’t work out, I’d still love writing. I’d still have stories I want to tell. Stories that I want to bleed onto paper even if no one ever got to read it. (Other than by CPs. They read everything. I love you. You know who you are.)

So even in the most challenging times of the relationship that I have with writing, I’m still a writer. I’m still a novelist who will write even more stories of magic and love and overcoming obstacles.

Maybe I should look to my characters for strength. They know how to get back up even after a million rejections.

Maybe I should take matters into my own hands. If the publishing industry doesn’t want to see me and my stories, I still know there are readers who do. If this doesn’t work out, maybe it’s time to do it all myself. Go to my readers and give them those books I’ve been hiding in metaphorical drawers for way too long.