Sherri Cornelius

I’ve been on fire lately. Very motivated and confident and self-sufficient. It’s a weird feeling, and I realize that in the past when I felt this way it was so uncomfortable for that that I’d squash it in some way. I’m trying not to do that this time, and maybe it’s working. I feel capable of moving on from things that have stagnated.

So I finally got the book edited and sent off. A few weeks ago I had compiled a list of a few small publishers, but after the edit was done and I began to write my query letter, I realized there was only one I felt comfortable submitting to. First I eliminated any that had a book too similar to mine, and then my main criteria was professional-looking covers and website. I know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but people do. I do. If I see an amateurish cover, I might assume the book inside has been amateurishly written and edited. It’s about quality standards. And no, it’s not foolproof, but if the only publisher I can snag is one who can’t make my book look professional, well then I can do that myself.

Anyway, the single publisher I chose to submit BVA to is Carina Press, the digital-first arm of Harlequin. They accept non-romance genres, and since they publish digitally, they’re not so sticky about word count—at 72k words, BVA is a little shorter than expected in the fantasy genre. It’ll take a couple of months to hear back from them, and once they reject it (*snort* pessimism, anyone?) I’ll publish on Smashwords, I guess.

I must say that if I do self-pub it, it will be only for my peace of mind. With “Mon Petit Ami,” I got the most wonderful feeling of closure on a piece that I’d anguished over for years. It was done a long time ago, but I seemed to get stuck on it, unable to put it down for good. I’ve got over a hundred downloads on it, which is pretty cool, even though I sold only one copy to a friend. But the point is, it feels done now that it has an ISBN. And hopefully this will also work for Ea’s Gift and Black Veil Angel, if it comes down to that.

I think if I just started typing every day, whether or not I have a topic in mind, I’d post a lot more often. Nothing seems important enough to write down, except for some stuff I can’t really talk about. But today I decided to take the plunge and just write anything. Just communicate.

I haven’t been writing fiction at all for a long while, so long that I don’t even feel guilty anymore. Letting my agent go let me go. I felt like the band of a slingshot must feel right after it releases its missile, flaccidly bouncing with the force of the release. I’m not ready to load another stone, but I am finally still enough to begin hunting for the perfect one. The hunt might take a while, and apparently I’m fine with that.

As I’m opening files and emails I haven’t looked at in months, I’ve found something disturbing. I’d thought Black Veil Angel, what I consider my better book, had been barely subbed, maybe to ten or so smaller publishers, while Ea’s Gift had been subbed to the death. Now I see it’s the other way around. My agent had abandoned EG in favor of BVA (apparently it was the better book), and I was so deep in my helplessness that I’d never laid the subs out side by side.

The reason this is disturbing is that BVA was going to get me another agent, if I ever decided to try that route again, and EG was self-pub fodder, something that didn’t have a life in traditional publishing but was good enough to experiment with. I thought my future was in contemporary fantasy anyway, so it would be fine. But the most likely next project, the one that captures my imagination, is another traditional fantasy like EG, complete with a dragon.

So all this means is that I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. This whole time I’ve been trying to balance what I want to write with what I think others want me to write, which is impossible. I bought into the advice that it’s best to have a whole bunch of people read your stuff and tell you how to fix it, no matter what. I’m starting to think this is a big reason my creativity died.

Other people, those who don’t have a people-pleasing gene as dominant as mine, might do well with this advice. For me, it’s just managed to confuse me enough that I freeze up. I haven’t had a vision for my projects, I see in hindsight, except to write what pleases others. And not in an attagirl way, an ego puffing way, but that if other people don’t like my work, then my work isn’t valid.

What I see now is, if others don’t like my work it might not get published, but that doesn’t make it less valid. And once I understood that, it was easy to see that somebody is going to like my work, if I am authentic and true. Some people know this and apply it instinctively. I never did.

I have so much energy right now it’s hard to make myself sit still. But what am I going to do with this new energy, vacuum? I think not! Instead, I post.

Over the weekend I attended a banquet at the OWFI writer’s conference. The Saturday night banquet ends the conference, and that is also the night they announce the winners in the annual contest. The last time I won anything was 1st Honorable Mention for a confession story, of all things, in 2000, and I wasn’t even there to receive my certificate. I don’t enter every year—I’d say I’ve entered maybe three times since. No winners.

The good thing about entering the contest is getting feedback from the professionals who volunteer to judge. I’d forgotten to put postage on the return envelopes, so that meant I’d have to pick up my entries in person. Which meant I might as well lay down $40 for the banquet.

Well, I’m glad I went, because I actually won something. My first novel, Ea’s Gift—the one that landed my former agent—took 3rd place in the fantasy novel category!

I’d entered it five years ago, before it was completely finished (they only need the synopsis and 1st 30 pages) and the judge slammed it, but apparently he slammed all of them, because on his blog he lamented the terribleness of the entries. Yes. Publicly. He’s a fairly well-known writer now, of novels and screenplays, though he wasn’t big then.

So anyway, a finished, polished Ea’s Gift got much more helpful comments. I think it helps when the judge enjoys your sub-genre, too, since Fantasy is such a large umbrella with too many different styles under it. Go visit Ty Drago. He’s got taste. Also, he’s a Quaker. I like Quakers.

I got good comments on Black Veil Angel as well, but the judge felt it shouldn’t have been entered in the YA category. That hurt the score. You know what’s funny? I had just put this judge at the top of my new agent query list for BVA, but I didn’t realize she was the judge for my category. I guess I don’t need to bother now.

My short story, Mon Petit Ami, didn’t get any comments but the score was in the 80-89 range, out of a hundred. She had a huge number of entries, so I don’t hold it against her.

I feel validated, which I really needed, but I still don’t know what to do with these stories. I’ve been looking at small presses and at self e-publishing and at agents. I’m feeling pretty creative, so maybe I’ll just write for a while.