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Confessions of a Reluctant Gambler
by Anne Walls
I have to be honest: I hate blackjack. Poker? No thanks. Craps?
Don’t even get me started. But what I do like is writing. Short
stories, newspaper articles, feature film scripts…you name it,
I’ve written it. But I’ve recently come to realize that my love
of writing and my disdain for gambling must meet and make beautiful
music together. Why? Because getting your work out to the world and,
better yet, published is a crapshoot. To be a success, you’ve got
to play the odds.
Being a writer means your livelihood depends on submitting
manuscript after manuscript to a bevy of faceless names in far
away cities. Why? So they can decide if they want to publish your
words. Promoting yourself is a necessity. But what’s the hardest
thing for most authors to do? Send out their work. It’s a
depressing pain. I used to feel that way. I had written a
television show for Fox as well as written and directed two
short films. Next, I wanted to conquer the literary world. But
getting my book published or my article into the next issue of
Vogue seemed a daunting task.
I wrote a carefully composed manuscript and thought that sending
my precious baby out into the world a few times (okay, four) was
enough. I assumed some editor somewhere was bound to see it and
proclaim its genius to the whole editorial staff. What I wasn’t
thinking about was that on the other side of the submission queue
was a towering stack of manuscripts written by people just like
me, who were just as talented as me, and the majority of whom
would get rejected…just like me.
Unfortunately, the reality of writing for publication is that you
will get rejected. A lot. Remember, even Joyce Carol Oates gets
rejected. Mastering your craft is only a piece of the puzzle.
Getting published is a numbers game. The only way to win it is to
send out as much work as possible, as often as possible. Everyone
starts out on ground zero: no contacts, no published clips, maybe
not even an MFA. As a writer, you need to prove yourself and build
up your relationships, experience, and reputation piece by piece.
Though I realize all this now, after a few years of sending out a
hodge-podge of submissions, and none too consistently, I was
frustrated. Then I had a writing epiphany. I realized I was
approaching the rest of my life—my finances, my apartment hunt,
even my relationships—with the dedication I wasn’t giving to the
most important thing in my life: my writing career. It wasn’t that
I didn’t devote enough time to the actual craft of writing. On the
contrary, I did it for hours on end, literally wearing through the
“N” and “M” keys on my poor laptop. I had amassed volumes of
material, yet success still eluded me. I thought about the time I
was applying for jobs after college. I’d sent out hundreds of
resumes at a time, spending hours faxing, emailing and following up.
The hunt for employment actually became my job. Now, years later,
it was time to treat writing with the same dedication and respect.
But that’s the eternal writer’s Catch-22: I didn’t have time for
another full-time job. Then lightening struck again: what if someone
took away the drudgery of the submission process (the aimless Internet
searching, the manuscript printing, the stamp-licking) so writers
could get down to the business of writing? It would be a victory for
scribes everywhere, because they could send out more work than ever.
An efficient submission system is the Holy Grail hard-working authors
the world over have been looking for.
Take a writer like JK Rowling: it’s easy to forget that Ms. Rowling
sent her writing out for years, endured numerous rounds of rejection,
and was even on welfare for a time. Now she’s literally richer than
the Queen of England. Why?
Because she kept sending her work out.
She didn’t run out of steam after the fourth rejection or even the
fortieth, she persevered. She stuck it out. JK Rowling stacked the
odds in her favor and guess what? She hit the jackpot. Big time.
And someday, so will you.
BIO
Anne Walls and John Singleton are the co-founders of
WordHustler.com ,
an all-inclusive writers’ website that offers a free database of more
than 3,000 literary markets, a query letter composer, submission
tracking, and more. The best part is that
WordHustler prints and
ships everything for cheaper than doing it yourself. Membership is
free and so is your first submission.
WordHustler’s goal is to make
the submission process easier and more time-efficient, so writers
can spend time doing what they’re supposed to be doing: writing.
Jumpstart your writing career by signing up for
WordHustler
( www.WordHustler.com ) TODAY.
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