I’m finally sending out “The Four Hundred Thousand” today. I’ve been hanging onto it for close to two weeks now, obsessing over single words and punctuation marks. It’s ridiculous, but I always seem to do this. The thing with the submission process is that you have to accept a complete lack of control over your manuscript once it goes into the mail box: you can’t control if it gets there, you can’t control whether it’s read or not, you can’t control how your words are interpreted, you can’t control whether or not you’re accepted or rejected. So I think my over-obsessing over the comma in sentence five on page 27 is my last-ditch effort to exert control over something that’s pretty much out of my hands once I stuff it in the envelope. Well, it’s time to let go.
I’ve been a bit depressed over my upcoming projects. All these novellas, I’ve come to realize, are going to be completely unmarketable. I still want to write them, but it’s frustrating to know that there’s really no place for me to submit them to. There are, from what research I’ve done, no professional-paying markets for novellas, and very few non-pro markets. Most novella markets that are open are for erotica, by e-publishers who don’t pay advances and only pay minimal royalties. No. Not going to do that. So I have to decide in the next couple of weeks if it really is worth my time to work on projects that won’t have any value to me in the near future, or if I should start working on another novel. It’s just, I don’t feel quite ready to start a novel again – the thought of working on a 120,000 word project that no one might want is even more depressing than the thought of working on a 30,000 word project that no one wants.
I think I’m entering the “suck” stage of my “Joe Blow Neopro” status… go me!
::headdesk::