To Query or not to query?

Writing is fun but what about the rest?

I have just spent a good few hours preparing a submission for a publisher, time I could have spent writing or doing literally anything else. It’s time I’ll never get back.

It doesn’t help knowing that the likelihood of the publisher choosing my book from the slush pile is slim. So slim. So very, very slim. Slimmer than I was on my wedding day.

Why do I do this to myself?

Yesterday morning I had all but decided to serialise this novel on Substack but then I thought “I might as well query it and see what happens.” Is this what gamblers feel when they drive past a casino? Is this what alcoholics think when they walk past a pub? Is it FOMO? I know it’s some kind of fear but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Am I addicted to trying to get published? To validation? To significance (the one of the 6 Human drives that embarrasses me.)

I always thought I was a bit of a workaholic (working with actual workaholics who regularly blew up their lives because they just couldn’t stop working taught me that I’m not really.) Like most of us, I grew up knowing I’d have to provide for myself as an adult. I could go to university, but it had to be ‘to get a job not an education.’ There would always be a roof over my head and a meal in a crisis, but if I wanted more, I’d have to earn it myself.

In other words, I’m just like everyone else who grew up without a trust fund and I’m quite addicted to productivity, to having something to show for my day. I’m a 55 year old business owner, writer and teacher but something still fires in the back of my psyche when I see a help-wanted sign in a shop window. Somewhere deep inside of me I’m still a 13 year old who wants to contribute by buying her own school shoes because ‘money doesn’t grow on trees.’

I love writing and I’ve been doing it for some time now, but it’s still really largely a hobby. Convincing someone else my words have enough value to publish is surely the only valid next step and if that ‘fails’, self publishing it until a publisher sits up and notices. I know it’s more about academics, but publish or perish isn’t a saying for no reason.

I started writing this post yesterday and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I dreamed about it.

A friend told me today that Czech writer Franz Kafka instructed his executor and dear friend, writer Max Brod, to burn his unpublished stories after his death. So dramatic. I then did some research on the subject and let me just say that Franz should have burned them himself if he wanted them gone because Max couldn’t bring himself to do it and published the lot of it.

Kafka reportedly had a decidedly ambivalent relationship with publishing when he was alive and that didn’t change after his death he just didn’t get a say in it. He is quoted as saying he’d be ‘just as happy to have his manuscripts returned as he would to have them accepted.’

Not me, Franz. I’ll take the acceptance thanks.

Everyone who knows me knows how passionate I am about writing. So, why, in my darkest moments, think about quitting? It always catches me off guard. No, it shocks me. It’s like considering giving up listening to music, or travel, or hanging out with friends, or visiting museums. Writing is one of my top 5 things to do on a rainy day. Actually make that any day.

What I really need to do is quit the focus on publishing. And don’t even get me started on social media and platform building. Why do we humans need to ruin everything with our pesky capitalism?

I was a committed but half-arsed self-publisher at the beginning of my foray into it back in 2018. I’d burnt out from a commercial art job and just wanted to make things and put them out in the world. The I put in some effort and people started telling me that my writing was pretty good. In 2020 I decided to be less half-arsed about it and… Cue the Covid pandemic.

I self-pubbed my second novel and started on short story comps with some decent success. I attended a well-known 5-day workshop for those keen on writing something commercial and another conference with a big-5 editor. Both gave me nice but non-committal feedback about my writing. One told me most definitely that I should not continue working on the second excerpt I sent, the one about the archeologist. The mentoring and publishing assistance promised (and paid handsomely for) wasn’t forthcoming. The archeologist story is still waiting to be finished. I love that story.

“Maybe it’s me,” I thought (and still do far too often.) Am I a bad writer? No. I’m objectively a pretty good writer so it’s not a lack of ability to string a sentence together. Unlikeable? I’ve asked my friends and they seem to like me. Unmarketable? Probably.

The truth is that the publishing industry is a business. I’ve spent my working life building successful businesses so I have total respect for it. I just don’t want to be a part of it any more. Add the constant impact on publishing from the greater economy and social media and it feels like quicksand. I’m not equipped to deal with that.

What I will do is continue to write and publish is various ways, to teach, to read and travel to bookish destinations, festivals and retreats. What I won’t do is waste any more time querying, pitching and asking people to like my writing enough to take a financial risk on it. If I’m not prepared to, why should anyone else?

I think under this new system I won’t ever think about quitting writing again.