Discouraged

I went to the Writing for Young Readers Workshop at BYU today. I did not get a chance to pitch my book one on one with an editor. I was misled on that point, or perhaps I misled myself. All attendees were invited to submit directly to her, which is good, but not the same.

Over and over I was told that a picture book that already has pictures will be rejected. There are rare exceptions, but not many. I know Angela’s pictures are good, but I hate introducing myself with the assumption that I’m the exception to their preferences. All the editors and agents were very agreeable about looking at previously self published or small press published material.

The going-forward plan that makes the most sense and makes me happiest would be to print the book through Tayler Corp and then submit it to larger publishers at my leisure.

The problem with that plan is that the Tayler family has a finite amount of resources. We only have so much energy, money, time. Any of those things that go toward my project do not go toward Howard’s next book. Howard’s books pay the bills. The logical Tayler corp plan is to push out the next Schlock book while shopping my picture book around to larger publishers.

But I personally contracted with Angela to print her book. The longer this spins out, the more I feel like I’m stringing her along and not doing the work that would get her paid. Part of me argues that my book should not impact Howard’s book because I’d be the one making it all go. Only I’d be using Howard’s layout guy. I’d need Howard to talk to the printer for me. I’d need editing help. Even if I handle all of those things completely by myself (daunting thought) the project would still be using my time which means I wouldn’t be doing the necessary support things to help Howard’s book along.

Shopping to publishers is a process that could last 6 months to a year. If I embark on that process, I have to give up my dream of having books for sale at Ad Astra in March 2008.

While I’m whining, I haven’t yet received any contractual information about the Ages of Wonder anthology. A piece of my brain is now convinced that this means that my story sale was somehow a mirage. Or if it wasn’t a mirage, then I’ll never actually be able to make it happen because emails from Julie Czerneda just disappear into the ether and never get to me. If I hadn’t emailed to ask, I would never have gotten the official invitiation. If I hadn’t emailed to ask, I wouldn’t have known they accepted my story. Now I’ve had to email to ask about the contract. And I’ve gotten no response. Now I’m left wondering if my email even got to Julie. I don’t want to email again and be a nuisance, but I don’t know if she got the first one.

So I’m tired and discouraged and feeling like nothing will come to anything. Logically I know this is ridiculous, but I still want to curl up into a ball and cry. Everything is still pending. I still don’t have any writing in print that I can point to and say “Here is my work.” Yesterday I was going to have a picture book out in July and a short story out in the fall. Today it feels like neither one will actually happen.