Hopeful Parallel
I've decided to resume working on my novel.
Reading Fitzgerald's biography in preparation for class really influenced me a great deal. Turns out his first novel (the name of which escapes me) was rejected by Scribner's at least three times. Not to mention he worked on it for three years before submitting it once.
As great a writer as Fitzgerald was, I'm amazed he was rejected at all. Sometimes his prose appears so poetical I'm forced to stop and reread the sentence out of sheer pleasure. At any rate, such rejection gives me hope, because it helps me to hold out hope (whether fallaciously or not) that sometimes editors miss a good thing when they see it. I'm in no way comparing my writing to Fitzgerald (I'm not that bold), but I am hoping that the publishing process might share certain similarities.
My novel, which is tentatively titled And the Earth Lay Upon Them, is actually somewhat finished, at least from a plot-related perspective. But I still need to rewrite and edit and rewrite and edit again for it to be satisfactory. Six months ago, I "finished" writing it and whipped off twenty-five queries to potential agents in an amateurish fervor. All of them were rejections, which though expected, still managed to sting a little. But as I looked over the first chapter tonight, I saw a lot of little things that I wanted to change. It's amazing how a little time and distance can lend so much perspective.
The bad news is that Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four, so let's hope the parallels only carry so far.
Mental note: I need to take up jogging again.
Reading Fitzgerald's biography in preparation for class really influenced me a great deal. Turns out his first novel (the name of which escapes me) was rejected by Scribner's at least three times. Not to mention he worked on it for three years before submitting it once.
As great a writer as Fitzgerald was, I'm amazed he was rejected at all. Sometimes his prose appears so poetical I'm forced to stop and reread the sentence out of sheer pleasure. At any rate, such rejection gives me hope, because it helps me to hold out hope (whether fallaciously or not) that sometimes editors miss a good thing when they see it. I'm in no way comparing my writing to Fitzgerald (I'm not that bold), but I am hoping that the publishing process might share certain similarities.
My novel, which is tentatively titled And the Earth Lay Upon Them, is actually somewhat finished, at least from a plot-related perspective. But I still need to rewrite and edit and rewrite and edit again for it to be satisfactory. Six months ago, I "finished" writing it and whipped off twenty-five queries to potential agents in an amateurish fervor. All of them were rejections, which though expected, still managed to sting a little. But as I looked over the first chapter tonight, I saw a lot of little things that I wanted to change. It's amazing how a little time and distance can lend so much perspective.
The bad news is that Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at the age of forty-four, so let's hope the parallels only carry so far.
Mental note: I need to take up jogging again.
posted by Yorick at 8:23 PM
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