The Field Mouse's Guide to Publishing
(Nibbling small bites of a big world)
Publishing is mysterious. If you feel like a tiny mouse in a huge field, this guide is for you. Click a mouse to learn more!
It’s a torturous thing to be a new writer, waiting and waiting for responses from agents – and then from editors, and then from readers. You wait for the chance to prove yourself. You wait your way through crushing blows and brief, tantalizing triumphs. You snare glimmers of victory in slow-motion.
The waiting also makes it hard for other people to see what you’ve accomplished, how far you’ve come. In LOTR terms, everyone around you gets to be the reader, catching up to Sam and Frodo at the exciting bits – but you're the ringbearer. You've felt every weary footfall through the marshes, and you see how far there is to go. So what do you do about it? You practice waiting well. Here’s the thing. Publishing won’t ever get faster. The ability to wait well is vital. Otherwise, the whiplash highs and lows will burn through your reserve energy, fast. Waiting can feel dangerous. It’s all that quivering fuel turning inward, threatening to cannibalize itself. It’s the anxious brain’s misguided attempt to feel like it’s progressing, doing, controlling, helping, by worrying a hole through its own pockets; holes through which all kinds of awful shadows will creep. So what do you do about it? To start, know thyself. Learn to spot your own signals. How do you tend to behave when the waiting is taking over? Do you stop doing the little things that delight you and give you feelings of accomplishment? Make yourself pick them back up. Make someone else make you do it. Do you notice yourself breaking helpful routines? Spending too much time online? Drinking coffee or alcohol too often? Messing with your sleep schedule? Snapping at loved ones? Pacing, pacing, pacing?
You’re trying to warn yourself. Listen.
Seek the cause-effect connections in your behavior, and you can start to interrupt them before they spiral. And please – please! – communicate your feelings to someone you trust. Ask for help. You’re not being silly. You’re not failing. You’re not wasting anyone’s time. Then, find things to do that are not in any way related to writing. You don’t have to be good at them. And drink some water, for goodness sake.
Last, and perhaps hardest of all – rewrite your thinking about this.
It’s so easy to think the big moments are going to make you happy. It’s so easy to pin all your joy, hope, and positivity to those few quick glimmers. But writer, you’ve got to cut that out. I don’t mean you should stop hoping. Certainly not. Never stop hoping. Get excited. Keep a tight hold on the joy that brought you to the page. But you’ve also got to find other ways to let hope into your brain - things you're in control of. Instead of sitting in the dark, waiting for the Spirits of Publishing to turn on the light, open some windows for yourself. Those windows are already there, and always have been - you've just stopped paying attention to them. Other joys are just as valid, just as important, just as vital. This one hope is big, yes - but it's not the only hope. Start telling yourself a different version of the story. And you can do that. It’s what you’re all about. Remind yourself that the best part is never the happily ever after. It’s the beginning’s potential and promise. It’s the middle’s messy twists. It’s the buildup to the end. So instead of, ‘Won’t it be great when?’ try to see what’s great about the chapter you’re part of right now. Look at how far you’ve come. Look at the angle of the light around you. Look, and look again. It’s a balancing act; keep your eyes between the horizon and the dirt. Don’t focus too long on either. Even the earth itself knows to turn away from the sun after a while. I’m still practicing this, and probably always will be. But while I’m waiting for those big moments, I try to keep my garden green, my cat spoiled, my loved ones loved. I sit with the memory of my younger self, all terror-hope, all burning excitement to be a writer – and I do my best to build a whole life that honors her. The thing you're waiting for will find you, and when it does, I hope it finds you well.
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AuthorI'm Ashleigh. I write stories and plays about impossible things happening to strange people. Archives
December 2020
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