> Been feeling that this isn't my calling after all, must not
> be, or else we'd see some action; on the ChickLit and
> other mailing lists, people are constantly announcing their
> three-book contracts and being picked up here
> and there, and even that execrable writer [name deleted]
> was picked up by a New York house after hawking her
> wares out of her trunk for a couple of years.  I know
> I'm not writing chicklit or romance, but still.  Perhaps
> it's as the fellow (was it Jonathan Kellerman?  Or was it
> the other, James Patterson?  I think this was Patterson,
> in this month's "The Writer" mag) said--"The good
> sentences and writing got in the way of the story.  I
> decided to write differently, and that's when I got
> popular."  (Paraphrased, but that's the soul of the statement.)

I realized that short stories are the glue of how I build novels. I
write a story, and if it's the "right" one, I keep writing more
stories around the same character, until I have something not unlike a
novel. Then, I submit the things to e-journals, e-mags, et cetera, and
slowly, the stories get accepted. (Forget about being paid... people
do read them, and that's all that matters to me. ;-) Then, I put the
stories together, and revise it into a novel.

This is how Abadoun went -- minus the publication of most of the
chapters as stories. This is how Janus went from the beginning, and
this appears to be how Anders' Contrition is working out.

As for voice, I don't necessarily want to take my voice out of my
writing. If that offends editors, well they can just go screw
themselves. It's not like I don't know *how* to remove my voice from
the stuff. The "good sentences" are part of the Quinn Tyler Jackson
style. The bad sentences -- I blame those on Beelzebub and tired eyes.
;-) If the good sentences put me "in danger of winning a lot of awards
with no chance for financial success [as a writer]" -- then so be it.
Editors don't write books, authors do. If they have some magical power
that lets them know which good sentences are so offensive to readers,
and that keeps them away from my stuff, I've pretty much decided that
I do not give a flying f**k. When they write novels, short stories, et
cetera, for umpteen years, and they bring people to happy tears with
*their* writing, then I'll start listening to them about my offensive
good sentences.

This to say that I finally realized what had me wanting to quit
writing fiction. It wasn't anything in myself that had me doubting my
ability, really. I started writing these things when I was a kid, and
I have put in the time ... I have suffered the slings and arrows of a
wallppapering of rejection slips, just like everyone else. I don't
have grander expectations than the next Jane or John Writer.
Therefore -- I have just as much of a right to write the damned stuff
as the next guy. I have just as much of a right to flog my wares as
the next guy or gal -- and when I realized this, I realized that I
have to keep writing fiction.

I'm just going to write the damned stuff until I am happy with it,
send it to my loyal first readers for review, revise to taste, keep at
it, and that's that. It's obviously my calling. If it wasn't -- I
wouldn't have gotten this far.

And maybe that's the way you have to look at it, Shalanna. If it
wasn't your calling, you'd have taken up something else, long ago.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that your good sentences are getting
in the way. What gets in the way is not the voice that comes through
in your writing.

What gets in the way is that little voice in your head, put there by a
collection of idiots, but heard so often that you've found it hard to
discern that it isn't your own voice, but the voice of an endless
stream of idiots -- IMO.

--
Quinn Tyler Jackson

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