- Joined
- Jun 24, 2010
- Messages
- 190
- Reaction score
- 15
I don't even know where to begin. My story is so disheartening that I hesitate to even post it. I've written more manuscripts than I can count - the fourth got me an agent, the seventh got me a better agent, the eighth, ninth, and tenth didn't sell, the eleventh got me an agent and sold (yay! glimmer of success!), the twelfth sucked (according to my agent, who refused to shop it), and from then on I've managed to churn out 20 or 30 partial manuscripts, a few as long as 40,000 words, but most around 5,000, six of which have been ripped apart by my agent, such that I haven't talked to her in almost two years because it left me so dejected, depressed, and discouraged.
I miss writing. I really do. And yet every time I sit down to do it, I feel like I'm just going to write another crap story/novel/paragraph/whatever, so what's the point. My inner editor says the writing isn't good, and my inner agent says this story won't sell (believe me, my agent made it very clear what's marketable and what isn't; she had me writing in genres that veered so far off base of my debut that I wondered how in the world I'd ever gotten published in the first place).
It's also tough feeling so alone in this kind of failure - the writing community doesn't really talk about "failed debut authors." It's depressing. You get published, and you think that's it, I've finally made it. Except no, not really, not for everyone. My debut wasn't a bad book - it has nearly 5,000 ratings on Goodreads and a 3.97 average, plus a starred review from Kirkus, and some blurbs from bestselling authors. It was published by a major house and sold for a nice amount of money, which was probably my downfall because it had no hope of earning out its advance after my editor was fired. I'm glad people are still reading it three years after it came out, but I had always hoped to publish more than one book.
I just don't know where to go from here. I feel like my writing brain is paralyzed. I sit down to write with a million different ideas, none of which feel good enough. I haven't officially broken up with my agent yet, but I know I should. She's definitely part of the problem, in that she made me feel like a total failure (well, she did refer to my debut as a "failure," so that's part of it). But I also have nothing else to query, or at least nothing I really believe in.
So is that it? What should I do? I'm at such a loss.
I miss writing. I really do. And yet every time I sit down to do it, I feel like I'm just going to write another crap story/novel/paragraph/whatever, so what's the point. My inner editor says the writing isn't good, and my inner agent says this story won't sell (believe me, my agent made it very clear what's marketable and what isn't; she had me writing in genres that veered so far off base of my debut that I wondered how in the world I'd ever gotten published in the first place).
It's also tough feeling so alone in this kind of failure - the writing community doesn't really talk about "failed debut authors." It's depressing. You get published, and you think that's it, I've finally made it. Except no, not really, not for everyone. My debut wasn't a bad book - it has nearly 5,000 ratings on Goodreads and a 3.97 average, plus a starred review from Kirkus, and some blurbs from bestselling authors. It was published by a major house and sold for a nice amount of money, which was probably my downfall because it had no hope of earning out its advance after my editor was fired. I'm glad people are still reading it three years after it came out, but I had always hoped to publish more than one book.
I just don't know where to go from here. I feel like my writing brain is paralyzed. I sit down to write with a million different ideas, none of which feel good enough. I haven't officially broken up with my agent yet, but I know I should. She's definitely part of the problem, in that she made me feel like a total failure (well, she did refer to my debut as a "failure," so that's part of it). But I also have nothing else to query, or at least nothing I really believe in.
So is that it? What should I do? I'm at such a loss.