Deciding On My Terms

I did all the formatting and polishing work required yesterday to submit my book to a prestigious

competition on its final day, yet chose not to.

Deep down I don’t want to “give it away” like this, in some international draw, maybe I am crazy. I just don’t know, but I listened to that reluctant part of me.

My character, my story is unique I believe. Not to be randomly cast out there.

My story is a strong, honed, ready.

Everyone thinks this, I am certain, about their novel. Sure.

Me, I will choose very carefully who I submit it to.

That is what I need to do now. I will go very carefully through the list of resources Jericho have sent, see what stands out.

Decide on my terms, I will.

Comments

Song Sung Blue

What is it about those letters that I send out to Agents that is so quiveringly, shrinkingly , knee-tremblingly terrible ? Goodness sake. It's not as if I don't spend a long time cultivating every nuance and tone, trying to convey a sophisticated air of - what...?? Arrrrgh...... My first "LP" was Hot August Night, so I always watch, with nostalgia ,Neil Diamond when he is on the TV; his concert, you know, was the best I have ever been too. Something he said though the other night has just whacked home. You wouldn't think it ,but apparently it took Neil Diamond an age to learn how to do what he does on stage. The key, he said, is getting to know who you are . I have these flickering notions of who I am as a husband, an activist for the rights of the sick and disabled, some kind of blogger in the ME community - but who am I an author? I do not know.... Even thou...

Sailor Sam was just passing by

..what a great title for a book. Maybe that is that is left ; after my heavyhearted experience with the writer's colony. It has been weighing me down, forcing me , painfully , to question my (slipping ??) grip on the world . There are two alleyways of meditation. One is the realization, as if I have been asleep, of what I have done. Here is an online gathering of kind, supportive , creative souls, and I, I in creepy contradistinction to all that I affirm, so hold dear, have reacted, almost instantly, to their kindness in the most derogatory way. I have operated not from a place of peace, but with an astonishing anger that many have found disrespectful and hurtful. I do recognize a hackneyed aspect of myself here and it pains me. This terribly fragile ego, this child who never fits in, this onetime worn-out somebody. No longer. Stripped naked in the recent snow though, I do not feel the cold wind on my body. Driven by the s...

...learning

Just like in other online communities, the author's "colony", I have found out very quickly, has its share of those sad, certainly lonely individuals, who think it is so terribly witty, presumably, or impressive on some hard to fathom, probably pathological level, to plaster serious and sensitive discussion threads with their want-to-punch-them-on-the-nose brand of shouted shallow smugness. I have no time for this terribly odd nastiness that appears to contaminate the online world. I was looking forward to refined discussion with fellow authors, seriously intent on exploring our craft together. Instead I find the kind of yah-boo point-scoring, dripping off the message boards like spit, that the rest of us grew out of in Primary School. So the learning, as elsewhere online, is to avoid most of what goes on; those who pontificate so, are not authors, in any sense, ...

Just Passing By

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