Wednesday, April 9, 2014

There's a boulder in the road

The Pusillanimous says, “There is a boulder in the road, I have to turn back.”  The stubborn says, “There is a boulder in the road, I’ll just plow on through.”  And he pushes and pushes while the boulder does not budge.  The wise says, “There is a boulder in the road, hmmm.”  She scratches her head and examines the boulder.  She says to herself, “I can climb over it, I can go around it, or I can blast through it.”  She looks around for the tools she has at her disposal, examines each way to see if she has enough energy to accomplish the task, and whether it requires assistance from others around her.  Then she makes her decision.
(Sorry guys, I had to make the wise one female.)

I see many of these categories in the world of writing and publishing.  There are the faint-of-hearts who work tenaciously on a manuscript only to give up after a few rejections from traditional publishers.  Then there are those who submit the same manuscript over and over to every traditional publisher without making changes because their stories are just “so great”.  And even after hundreds of rejection letters or worst yet, their lifelong work falls into the black abyss of unanswered queries, they still would not change a dot on their manuscripts.

And then there are those who encounter of the obstacle of the rejection by large publishing houses and determine to find a way to get their work out.  So they make changes and expand their net to include small presses.  They look into vanity.  They look into independent publishing.  They examine each method and determine which method is the best to get their work out there, and then they move forward.

Which kind of writer are you?

7 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

Wow, under these conditions I score as wise. Hard to believe actually!

William Doonan said...

I don't know which kind I am yet.

Jewel Amethyst said...

Charles, not hard to believe at all. Wisdom is acquired while growing. I don't think I've ever been pusillanimous, but I have been stubborn, thinking that large publishing houses was the only way to go in my early writing life (not that long ago actually) and thumbing my nose at the self-pub and the vanity.

Now that I've grown as a writer, I consider myself in the wise category contemplating all possible avenues.

Jewel Amethyst said...

William, nothing says one cannot be a mixture of all three.

G. B. Miller said...

I started off by thinking that large was the way to go and that my manuscript was sooooooooooo good that no changes were needed.

Boy was I brought down to earth.

Now I'm more in the vein of the last one, in that I look at all of my options before deciding where to go.

Father Nature's Corner

Jewel Amethyst said...

G.B. Ditto

Liane Spicer said...

Ha. I'd like to believe I'm the wise one but the jury is still out. :)