OPEN LETTERS

An Open Letter to Published Authors

Writing a book is a bleak, hollow, and miserable experience

Truman Capote, probably after a day of writing. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Dear Published Authors,

How in the name of all that is good and holy did you do it? Is there a pep talk you can send this way? I don’t like writing this book, even though it’s important and I know people need to hear the message. It’s a redemption story, for gods sake.

Why am I so unhappy at the end of my five or six productive hours, three or four days each week?

It’s enough to drive me back to chugging fancy vodka.

I don’t even have a regular job, children to raise, or elderly parents to care for.

I have one unpublished novel under my belt, the outline of a second one with six chapters written, and am a third of the way. The completed novel took about a year, and I paid a friend to fully proof and edit and give me feedback, then both my sisters read it and added commentary. I’m still trying to get it published after I submitted to SkyPony publishing. They rejected me (er, my book) six months later.

Then I submitted it to Pegasus Publishing, which I thought was Pegasus Books, but…