Anyone else looking for the hard reset button for 2020? It’s been a hell of a start for the year and it’s still going!
The upside of not being able to wander out is having more time to stay in to read and write, which is what I’ve been doing more of lately (not that I don’t already do it).
Despite all the bleak world news though, I received a great email from the Australian Society of Authors saying that one of my unpublished YA manuscripts was Highly Commended in one of their competitions.
It was such an amazing news that it took me a moment to figure out which manuscript I actually sent them. After going through my files, I realized it was the one I was furiously editing during the Christmas break in Tasmania.
I’m writing about this not to brag (although there is some humble bragging involved, too) but to tell you about what I went through while I was editing that novel.
But first, a bit of background on the manuscript. I wrote that story in 2014 in a frenzy of late nights and long days because I was so hooked by the premise. It was like an addiction. I couldn’t stop writing it, so much so that in three months I finished writing the novel. After that, I did a first edit before sending it to a manuscript assessor.
While I waited for the assessor’s reply, I continued to edit and write other novels. It was a couple of months before I got the reply from the manuscript assessor and by then, I was already writing another story and my attention had waned. I read the notes from the assessor and agreed with a lot of the changes that needed to be made. But it was also overwhelming at the same time. There were so many things going on in my personal and work life that I decided to shelve the notes and the manuscript, to be edited when I get a chance.
It took years for that to happen because, as you know, my three YA books were released one after the other. That process took all of my book writing and editing time. If I wasn’t writing the next book, I was editing another. When I finally finished things last year, I decided to open that drawer again and look through the manuscript assessor’s notes.
To be honest, I was going to take my sweet time editing that manuscript. In fact, at one point I was going to put it away again and start a new story. But then I saw the call for entries on the ASA website and thought that this would suit the competition well. So I gave myself a deadline (because the competition also had a deadline) and worked on editing the book well into the holiday period.
What I remember while I was reading through the manuscript and changing things around were these words swirling through my head.
“This is absolute crap.”
“Why the hell would anyone read this?”
“What was I thinking?”
“This is so derivative.”
“I shouldn’t send this to the competition.”
“What a load of bullcrap.”
It was the same every single time I opened my laptop to edit.
Not kidding.
So why did I still send it off anyway if I thought it was absolute rubbish? Well, to be honest, it was for several reasons.
One, I’ve already spent a lot of time working on the manuscript and money to get it assessed (although that was several years ago now).
Second, a part of me still thought there were some good bits in the manuscript and I didn’t want to write off the whole thing.
Third, I wanted to see what happened if I entered it in the competition. Curiosity and all that.
Finally, I thought you know, no guts no glory, no pain no gain (insert any other quote you can think of that will fit this scenario).
It is such a huge relief to get this validation from the ASA on a manuscript that I was struggling to feel confident about.
The lesson from this story, I guess, is to just keep going. Even if your confidence in the project is shot to high hell, just keep swimming. Because if you stop now and just abandon it, you will never know its potential.
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