This weekend I was on the phone with a friend I don't talk to often. I told him I sent out my first query package now that my first novel is basically done. (I would have waited to finish the editing too but Wizards of the Coast had a deadline.) He said that was great if I felt like it was good enough for publication.
Good enough for publication, I thought? I started panicking. Was it good enough for publication? Maybe I was fooling myself. Maybe I was being stupid. I can't really write, can I?
Then I remembered some advice OSC gave in books and at boot camp. "Send it out."
It's NEVER good enough. Whatever your art, be it painting, singing, or writing, it's never good enough. At some piont you have to say, "Screw good enough, it's done."
Competition for novels is fierce. Something like 99% of submitted novels are not published. Of course, I understand that a large percentage of those are improperly formatted or full of spelling and grammar errors. So you need to get it together that much.
After that, I think it's somewhat random. This story was ready by this editor or agent who liked it. If another had read it, they might not have liked it. JK Rowling's first Harry Potter novel was rejected 17 times before a publisher picked it up. (I bet they're gnashing their teeth now.)
You got to play the odds. Odds are, if you spend ten years perfecting novel A, it still won't sell. On the other hand, if you spent ten years writing ten novels your odds just went up significantly, even if they aren't "good enough," whatever that means.
So now I want to tell him that it's not about good enough but he's not here and I don't talk to him that often so I thought I'd share with the people who I do talk to regularly and who might benefit from the information more.
Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :
I'm going to give you a huzzah. You go girl! And then I'm going to disagree with you. I think the sentiment is absolutely right--but would argue that it would be more acurate to say "It will never be perfect." If you don't think your work is good enough to be published then you should not be sending it out. I'm not talking about momentary doubts like you were having, but more of an honest appraisal.
It's a narrow line, I think, but an important one. On the one hand, one must resist the urge to make something perfect. On the other hand, each story only has one chance to be seen by any given editor. Which means that if you send it out when you don't think it's good enough to be published you've blown that market for yourself.
So, don't wait until your work is perfect. Don't wait until its better than everything you've ever read. Do wait until its good enough to be published.
For the record, Christine, I've read enough of your novel to believe that it is good enough to be published.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
I had hoped that was implicit, but I suppose it never is, not really. The truth is that at moments like that, I needed something concrete from the POV of someone who needed to put something in the mail and was feeling self-consciouss. To all those whose novels are full of holes and grammar problems, though, don't say, "Well, Christine said it would never be good enough and I should just sent it out." And especially don't buy the myth that editors are the ones responsible for weeding out your grammar and spelling problems. They won't. They'll stamb reject on your letter and put it in the SASE, kunless of course you didn't provide one and then they won't even read to find those errors.
Posted by franc li (Member # 3850) on :
Good thoughts, Christine. I was frozen for a few weeks by a comment someone made who hadn't even read my novel (let's just say Survivor is one of the more mellow people in my family) but the comment stirred up so many insecurities for me.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
"Mellow" might be a bad term. I'm more laid back.
Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :
Wait. You guys are related?
Posted by dpatridge (Member # 2208) on :
appears so.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
I'm not the one that ever claimed to be a robot from millions of years in the future, you know.
Posted by Jeraliey (Member # 2147) on :
That makes me curious to know who knows whom from real life.