Self Pub Saga - Part 1 - Who the hell am I to be a writer?

As this blog started, oh so many years ago, with me trying to dust off and polish up a long-neglected, twice-rejected novel -- that one I am still fond of calling "the turd," I thought I'd go into the navel-gazing journey of it all just in case someone else out there might want to trace my path and try this out.

SPOILER ALERT!

In 2005, this girl who we will call Abby (real name is a sekrit!) decided she would try writing a novel. Who knows why she thought she could pull that off? Her history as a writer was sketchy, at best. In grade school, she wrote a horror story where, in her youthful ignorance, she named the main villain after a pasta dish. She thought it sounded like a cool name. Her family, to this day, still taunts her with ghoulish echoes of "Manicoooootti!" Needless to say, the teasing sort of curtailed her enthusiasm for the whole thing. She did keep a very dramatic diary from the age of 12 to about 17, something she still reads while cringe-laughing whenever she happens upon it.

In high school, she wrote essays and she was pretty good at it. Good enough that, in college, she might have written papers and presentations for other students. Yeah, not ethical. She knows, but... Okay, I'm going to drop the third person. It's no longer cute. Anyway, I know my academic ghostwriting career, while lucrative, wasn't super ethical. But legit work-studies were hard to get and I always told myself it was better to be the person hired than the person hiring. I was bettering myself in new subjects. In the real world, responsibilities are often delegated, blah, blah, shaky defense, blah.

I did take some creative writing classes and I suppose my stories were okay, but I never considered myself a writer. Besides some blogging, mostly about TV and general whining, I thought it was a fun hobby. So what moved me, in 2005, to suddenly try writing a novel? Boredom, mostly. I was pursuing a career as an actress/singer and I wanted something productive to do while waiting around on set, long cattle calls, something to take my mind off the rejection... to be replaced with a whole new kind of rejection.

I kept wishing I could write a great horror (without the pasta) or mystery or one of those coming-of-age tales that becomes an indie darling of cinema. But it turns out most of the plots I came up with tended to focus on a romance. So why not go with it?

I spent a summer writing in a notebook, then cleaning it up as I very slowly (at the time) typed, reading it to some trusted family members as I went. I wanted it be funny and sexy and maybe a bit less fantasy-oriented than some of the romances I pretended I never read, less of those tropes romance novels are skewered for in articles like this one that I definitely did not write under my real name. 

I DIDN'T WANT TO WRITE THAT BOOK!

I wanted the heroine to be less than gorgeous, the sex to be less than perfect. I wanted to avoid rich people, making all other women tramps, and various other tropes. I guess I just wanted to write the kind of book I would want to read. In the end, I actually thought it was more chick-lit than romance, so I sent it to a publisher that specialized in that and was also taking full manuscripts.

It obviously turned out perfectly and I am now a beacon to young girls and women alike, all clutching my tales to their hearts and telling me I taught them what love truly is! My life is spent wining and dining and book-signing.

Well, obviously not. But it did look pretty hopeful for a time, when I sent my manuscript off to Red Dress Ink. What happened next? Eh, I'll tell you about it tomorrow in...

Part 2 - Rejection, Redemption, and Fanfiction