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Apr. 21st, 2024 06:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spryngI guess I've managed to construct a little boat to cross that ocean after all. I don't know what happened, but these sorts of breakthroughs seem to coincide with admitting to the pain and problem and metaphorically throwing in a towel. Since that post, I put down one project and picked up the more recent one (cannibal!WIP) and was able to slide back in like no time had passed.
I'm tentatively putting my toes back into some of the publishing pools, too. At least the ones where my friends talk about more than just publishing. I think I need to stay away from any actual shoptalk for now, but I missed the other nonsense.
I accepted that the current projects I have are going nowhere, but I still want to make the edits I know they need before letting them go. Cannibal!WIP especially can be shaped into something that works with relative ease; I just can't do the extensive edits my agent wanted. TBH, she simply didn't like the story (or the characters, hah), and, while I'm sure there are folks out there who can ditch everything about the story that made it That Story and do something new with the remaining bits and pieces, I can't. Once I've got that skeleton down, I can't go back and pulverize it.
I'm pretty sure that's where most of my distress was coming from -- that tension between the edits I want to do and knowing they would never be enough to make the story what she wanted. So every time I started to work on it, I just got mired in self-doubt which inevitably twisted into self-hate. Now that I've given it some time and accepted that I can't make her changes, I just had to decide if I'd still try to make some edits or move on. But I do like this story, and I think the bones are strong. I'll see how it feels after some fixing, but I can always self-pub it under a pseudonym or drop it on Ao3 or something.
I also looked into getting the rights back for my books with Tor, because having control again would mean so much. Namely, giving them covers that better reflected their vibes, and knowing that however they sold was actually entirely on me. But after sniffing around, it sounds like that's more difficult than I'd initially hoped. Still, maybe someday...
At least summer is coming up. I forgot I was able to do the bulk of writing last year while Cabin Girl was out of school; because I didn't have to wake her up and feed her and pack her lunch and bike her to school every day, I got an extra hour to just write. It's amazing what I can do with just an hour when I'm motivated.
This summer, I'm going to fix these WIPs. And then I'm going to let them go.
I'm tentatively putting my toes back into some of the publishing pools, too. At least the ones where my friends talk about more than just publishing. I think I need to stay away from any actual shoptalk for now, but I missed the other nonsense.
I accepted that the current projects I have are going nowhere, but I still want to make the edits I know they need before letting them go. Cannibal!WIP especially can be shaped into something that works with relative ease; I just can't do the extensive edits my agent wanted. TBH, she simply didn't like the story (or the characters, hah), and, while I'm sure there are folks out there who can ditch everything about the story that made it That Story and do something new with the remaining bits and pieces, I can't. Once I've got that skeleton down, I can't go back and pulverize it.
I'm pretty sure that's where most of my distress was coming from -- that tension between the edits I want to do and knowing they would never be enough to make the story what she wanted. So every time I started to work on it, I just got mired in self-doubt which inevitably twisted into self-hate. Now that I've given it some time and accepted that I can't make her changes, I just had to decide if I'd still try to make some edits or move on. But I do like this story, and I think the bones are strong. I'll see how it feels after some fixing, but I can always self-pub it under a pseudonym or drop it on Ao3 or something.
I also looked into getting the rights back for my books with Tor, because having control again would mean so much. Namely, giving them covers that better reflected their vibes, and knowing that however they sold was actually entirely on me. But after sniffing around, it sounds like that's more difficult than I'd initially hoped. Still, maybe someday...
At least summer is coming up. I forgot I was able to do the bulk of writing last year while Cabin Girl was out of school; because I didn't have to wake her up and feed her and pack her lunch and bike her to school every day, I got an extra hour to just write. It's amazing what I can do with just an hour when I'm motivated.
This summer, I'm going to fix these WIPs. And then I'm going to let them go.
