Regression
Yesterday evening, I emailed my first “for payment” submission for nearly eleven years. I cannot even begin to expound sufficiently upon the state of my nerves as I did so. Since I resumed writing again just under nine months ago, I've submitted several pieces to various sites and writers' circles for peer review. So far, feedback has been resoundingly positive. Thank God.
Yet last night I submitted a not-yet reviewed project, on which I have received absolutely no feedback whatsoever, let alone peer feedback. Moreover, even more terrifying for a dyslexic writer such as myself, it had been edited only by my own, tired eyes and an Open Office spell-checker.
Having literally completed my fourth draft of the work just minute's before an appointment that could not be missed (no, it wasn't a duel - I might have had some relief if it was) I had no opportunity to request that a trusted, and more importantly, literate friend look over the manuscript.
I am faced with the somewhat unnerving prospect of having submitted a 8000 word short-story to a market with which I have had no previous contact. A market whose editors will form their first impression of my skill as a writer (or lack there-off) based on a work which lies outside my usual comfort-zone, in a genre I know next to nothing about and which, with hindsight, I believe to be top-heavy with theological concepts. Possibly to an extent that will not sustain the readers interest.
I have not felt my bowels flutter so since my first submission to a paying market at the tender age of sixteen. I was lucky enough to see that first submission appear in print only a few weeks later, albeit in the first issue of a pulp magazine which did not survive past it's fourth issue. Even now I can clearly remember the sleepless nights after I posted my work through the red Post Office letter box. How I constantly reviewed every single sentence of that rather bland 3,000 word project , until the daily interruption of my ruminations courtesy of a morning alarm call.
In the 24 hours since it's electronic twin departed my drafts folder, destined for parts unknown, I have deliberately avoided perusing the manuscript. This despite my mouse-pointer having hovered atop its icon onno less than four separate occasions. Though the project is, I hope, fit for publication, it is not my seminal work. My magnus opei. I have not the emotion vested in it as in, for example, my Zama series. Yet still I fret like a rugby debutante on the night of the big game.
I have never, in dozens of conversations; by phone, email or even while squinting in the harsh-light of a convention lounge, met a single author who ever felt than his manuscripts could not be improved upon by a little more work. I am all too aware, however, of the many tales I myself have ruined over the years with fussy re-writes. And yet I cannot bare to open quickeneddeadmanuscript.doc, to risk the breath-stealing realization of a dropped plot-point, a poorly chosen line of dialogue, or the dreaded exclamation mark(!).
Why is it that my older, (I had thought wiser) self is so tormented by an action which, by eighteen, had become so routine as to pass without comment?
A few days ago, I posted a comment on another author's journal. He had sounded rather downcast following receipt of his new book's first negative review. My response was to the effect that even a bad review provides good publicity for a new release. Ergo: no review is bad for sales, only for the ego. The post resounded with the confident nonchalance I had felt ten years ago. Now ,I ask myself, to where has that confidence fled? I have submitted one story, one, to a single paying market.
Yet with one simple action, with a single click of the mouse, I have laid my ego bare. It's fascinating how the mood of a man can change in such swift degrees.
It's remarkable how something so simple can have so pronounced an effect on the equilibrium of a grown man.
Before closing, I wish it make it understood that I will not fall apart should this manuscript of mine be rejected. It is, after all, one manuscript. In a genre that is not my own. A genre farther from my comfort zone than anything I can imagine - hence my attraction to writing it. For every publication there comes countless rejections. I do not write in hope of sympathy or a pep-talk. The fortress of my resolve has not begun to crumble.
I merely swish to share with you my utter mystification at this temporary regression of confidence. I do believe I've even managed to surprise myself.