My Plan To Plan Has Failed the Planning Phase

If you’re like me, you’re a planner. I like things to be organized. I like lists. I organize my lists. I plan my time to make my lists. It’s a vicious cycle. But, it’s a necessary step for me. Lists keep me on task and provide a sense of accomplishment when I cross things off the list. I like to cross things off the list.

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Have You Ever . . . ?

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You know, when you write something, and then you finish writing it, and then you read it, and then you fix it, and it’s pretty darn good, so you send it to your critique partners, who point out all of the ugliness and you think, “this is crap,” so you change stuff and fix things until you just know it’s a masterpiece, so you send it back to your critique partners, who confirm that in fact your work is “better,” so you give it another once over before shooting it off to your beta readers, who point out some awkward sentences and misspelled words and stuff and then you think, “I suck,” but you put on your big girl panties and read it again, and then you think maybe they’re right, so you fix the weirdness and make some more changes, to the point where you’re really comfortable with this quintesential all American novel, so much so, that you enter it in some writing

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contests and hold your breath for the feedback to arrive, and when it does your eyes bulge out of your head, your mouth drops open and steam explodes out of your ears, at which point you think, “who wrote this garbage and why did they think it was good enough to enter it into a contest,” but you stand determined to fix the piece of crap, because you’ve invested months in these strings of words and, after all, you are a writer and you will write, so you edit yet again and then, once more, for good measure, until you’re absolutely sure this is the most awesome thing anyone has ever read, but just to be sure, you beg your critique partners to read it one more time, and they tell you that it’s really good now, so you attach that brilliant prose to your sparkling query letter and e-mail it off to your dream agent, who in turn replies that they’re not interested in your story at this time, but that, as any author knows, all novels are subject to opinion and just because one person isn’t interested, doesn’t mean someone else won’t be, yadda, yadda, yadda, so you swallow half a bottle of tequila and

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send the same, less-than-stellar manuscript off to the second most dreamy agent on your list only to receive the same boilerplate rejection letter, which is really just a lame ass, cop out way of saying you’re a loser and your work sucks, but thank you for playing our game, but you refuse to cry any more tears over their drivel and decide that maybe it’s time to bring out the big guns, so you hire a professional editor who sends back your work covered in red ink which justifies what you already knew but didn’t want to admit: “I’m a writer!”

Yeah – that’s where I’m at.

Writing is hard. The end.

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So, what’s going on in your world? Any positive advice for the bummed out writer? How do you stay positive when querying?

Word of the Day: Viridian

Fun fact about me: My favorite Disney movie is Mary Poppins.

Original post by Jansen Schmidt, January 2016. Photos and images courtesy Google Images.

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