It has been two months since I left the manuscript for Lunatics with a publisher. After a few weeks, I was notified by the one of the staff they couldn’t find the manuscript; could I send it again? He was going out of town for a couple of weeks and hoped to take it along with him. No problem.
Then, the other day, an email from another person at the office apologizing for not having read my manuscript yet but they were dealing a large backlog of material.
We are experiencing a larger volume of calls than usual. Please hold the line. Your call is important to us. Your call will answered in the order it was received.
All of this is quite normal I suppose. And everyone, everywhere seems to be short-staffed yet somehow expected to operate as if they weren’t.
It is all about waiting.
For me to even hope that my manuscript will be accepted by the first publisher to which it was sent is a testimony to the fact that I CAN be overcome by starry-eyed optimism every once in a while.
Don’t call us; we’ll call you.
Of course, the world cannot or should not stand still as I wait to hear back from a publisher. Already I should be well on my way to other projects. I have managed to write a short story since but, as to tackling anything major, it’s not so easy…
Nobody can have written for any period of time without getting used to rejection, so it’s not so much the rejection that hangs like a dagger before me. It is the uncertainty.
If t’were done, t’were better it were done quickly.
Let me send Lunatics elsewhere and quickly if it is not to find a home with the first publisher.
How many publishers am I willing to send it to? An interesting question. How many times am I willing to suffer rejection?
Dear Mr. d’Eon.
We found that your story had merit but, unfortunately, it does not fit in with our company’s publishing vision at this time. We wish you the best of luck in submitting Lunatics elsewhere.
The cost of postage is an irritant, to be sure. But a much bigger issue is the waiting. Three months with one publisher, than three to six with the next, another half a year with yet another publisher… Soon a year has passed, maybe two, and soon your manuscript becomes something quite foreign to you, a child you had long ago put up for adoption, and you have since moved on, and yet you can’t move on. Not completely. Not without at least knowing your child has found a home somewhere, if only in the Orphanage of Unpublished Manuscripts.
Then of course, there is the ‘faux pas’ of simultaneous submissions. Haven’t done it yet, but I doubt I’ll need a lot of arm twisting before I start.
Of course times have changed in the publishing world. They are probably changing faster than most of us realize and self-publishing is increasingly becoming a more sophisticated and affordable option. The question now probably needs to be re-phrased as “how many rejections am I willing to suffer before I publish the damn thing myself?”
I don’t know.
Stay tuned.
Most definitely a lunatic,
B