Quote:
Originally Posted by Leisha  As opposed to hearing about how difficult it is to get into the business. |
It
is difficult to get published -- but difficult in the sense of taking a lot of time and effort, rather than difficult in terms of the odds being stacked almost impossibly against you, as some would have you believe. To a very large extent the odds are in our own hands. Those who complain the loudest and the most often are frequently (not
always, but frequently) those who have expended a very small amount of effort.
Which may sound hypocritical coming from me, since I sold my first book about twenty years ago, and to the second publisher I sent it to. But I did spend something like six years of sustained effort on the thing before I started submitting it. I freely admit that
I wouldn't have had the courage to stick with it, if I had had any idea how long it would take me to produce something I thought was good enough. Every draft I wrote, after the first two or three, I thought: This will be the second to last. I can't even tell you how many drafts there were, because I stopped counting at seven. (Someone with more sense undoubtedly would have divided that number of drafts between several books.) And of course there was an element of luck and timing; there always is. (I've been on the wrong side of that, too, since then.) But the more effort you put in, the more tickets you get in that lottery.