Share your Terds & 6 other rabbit holes
Scrapbook from a month of existance
Hello friends,
I’ve started a few newsletters with various deep dives on things I’m thinking about, but didn’t finish them. So, you might get more than one newsletter a month. This is bad news or good news and your view of what kind of news it is likely depends on if you’re my mom.
Quick thought
Since reading Austin Kelon’s Share Your Work, I’ve been thinking a lot about owning my process.
In my publishing experience, there’s this feeling like, if you share something about your unpublished work, you’ll make the publishing gods angry and they’ll take away your chance at selling another book. Like if you whisper more than 100 words of something you’re working on, or give away how you wrote a scene in an unpublished book your author career will end. At the moment, my author career is like Israelites, wandering in the wilderness. I haven’t sold anything in 4 years. Since I sold my last YA, Suggested Reading back in 2017, I’ve written, I think, 5+ books, that have all died on submission. So obviously keeping quiet because of rules no one has told me hasn’t been the magic ticket 😆.
The secrecy of it all bends you, or at least me, towards the extreme end of not sharing anything publicly, which is ironic because publishers reward you with book deals when you have followers willing to slurp up your grocery lists.
Some publishing candor is appropriate, but the times where it makes sense is VERY contextual and happens like, once every four years. I’m realizing that trying to follow rules no one has told me has limited what, and how I, share. Writing is such a solitary thing already, so I don’t need fake reasons to be quiet about it.
Those 5+ submission rejections? I didn’t share a single one. I could’ve, should have, actually, because the process of writing a book is long that it would do my soul good to wave goodbye to an idea that didn’t work and move on. Having publishing “news” to share is rare. I haven’t had much of it since 2017. And, really, isn’t “news” just a pit stop on the eternal writing roadtrip? We’re here for the journey. The process. Not the news that blows in and out in like a toddler asking for a snack.
We don’t write for “news.” We write because we love it. Right? Yes. That’s right. Had to double-check because sometimes I don’t remember.
What if, for the last seven years, I’d shared my whole process? The submissions, the rejections, the times where I didn’t have time to write. The time I avoided writing for six months because it filled me with dread. The reworking of my process when it wasn’t working. The learnings that came out of all that. If I had done all that, what new friends might have come along for the ride?
What if you did the same? That thing that you’re keeping quiet because you think you couldn’t possibly tell anyone because it’s unfinished, you don’t want people to find out that you don’t belong here, you’re worried you’ll get sunburned working in the sun. Break out the SPF 1200 and lather up, bucko.
Build in public. Write in public. Make your thing in public. This kid did it. You can, too.
Moral of the story, share your Terds.
Rabbit holes
How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key
Great, hard read. Also, good example of
Fighting for a marriage
A mid-point twist in non-fic.
“That is marriage, in the end: two of you, being you, warring against the worst parts of you, making space for the best to grow, and learning to see that some parts of your spouse are not your favorite, and letting those parts be anyway…”
2. Aloha Wanderwell
I was reading an article about explorer Percy Fawcett who disappeared in 1925 looking for the Lost City of Z and there was this offhand comment like “Aloha Wanderwell even tried to find him in her seaplane, Junker” and I was like, “who in the Han Solo is this?”
I looked her up, she started being “an explorer” at 16, whatever that means. Still, on her name, and her plane’s name, alone and promptly added anything I could find to my curiosity list. If I find more, I’ll share.
3. How to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR in the style of King James
AI might not take over the world, but it will take over the How To Remove Sandwich guide industry.
4. “I guess I just like the movies”
Like something like this boy liked movies.
5. Teddy says
It doesn’t have to be more complicated than this, because this, honestly, is complicated. Live what it is. Share your Terds.
6. A serious swamp situation
This is a line from the picture book I’m working on right now tentatively called “The Snapping Turtle”. I’m struggling landing the ending without it being on-the-nose and trite, but going back over it makes me feel like this is a snapshot from my parenting sub-conscious. Who said writing wasn’t therapy.
6. A golden morning of an album
There’s a line in this album that goes, “I’ve got a hand to hold, gonna let you hold it.” This is a good example of doing what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Alright,
If you liked this newsletter, share it.
What are you reading, watching, listening to? I wanna add to my Curiosity List.
Until next time!
Dave Connis