Very neat: book 1 submitted for consideration
I’ve gotten off my ample arse and started submitting DaisyDonnie to publishers.
The first off the bat is Edge and Tesseract books in Canada who specialise in Science-Fiction and Fantasy novels. One of the major problems I’ve had with Daisy Donnie (other than a singluar inclination to actually buckle down and submit the book to a real publisher!) is that I wasn’t sure of the genre. The answer came to me one day:
JUST PICK SOMETHING!
It didn’t matter. Just pick something and go with it. Stop procrastinating. Or rather, start doing something (as “stop procrastinating” is technically a tautology, where procrastination in this sense is not doing something, and thus to “stop” doing it was… oh, all right, a double-negative? Whatever. It doesn’t matter!)
While chatting to Sabine, a new friend, I mentioned the “Fuck-it” moment that I often get to, where all the procrastination and hand-wringing just finally frustrates me and I just say Fuck It, and do what I need to do. More often than not this results in getting whateveritwas done quick-smart and thoroughly disproving the internal dialogue that said :
<whiny voice>
Oh, it’ll take ages and be really hard and boring and difficult and hard and stuff…
</whiny voice>
So, I got an answer from them this week:
“…Thank you for submitting your manuscript to EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. We strive to attend to our submissions as quickly as possible. Our turnaround time on manuscripts is approximately four months. Please be assured that your submission will be read in due course…”
Which is pretty neat!
There are a few ways to describe one's self when effectively trying to mask the fact that you're a complete hermit and spend your entire existence behind a computer screen sipping hot tea and eating cakes. The first would be to suggest that you're somewhat introverted and avoid coffee. Another might be to suggest you're a fan of Apple Macs but are cutting-down from the 6 you used to have to an even two (Macbook and Mac Mini in turn). Finally you might choose to say that despite the massive pay-drop, this writing thing is quite a lark isn't it? Not to mention enjoying the creative life a lot more than mindless tedium in corporate jobs, working the 40 hour week to the drumming of endless meetings and political intrigue that would have made Machiavelli blush and hand his pen over to the corporate slugs that run companies these days. Enough said really.
Hey Lisa,
Thanks for sending in your manuscript to us at EDGE and Tesseract books. I’ll be looking out for your title in our stacks
Best of luck!
Hi Marc,
Thanks for that — hope you like it. I really hope you like it. Seriously. You’ll like it. I cross my heart and hope to be published.
L