I had a huge epiphany this morning too after finding out the birth scene in the other series is graphic and traumatic, and I had that publisher telling me not to mark my book as YA because of a traumatic birth scene. I was insulted once I realised this other one has actually traumatised younger girls into not giving birth, and you want to call my scene traumatic? Everything in those other books is horrific, it was translated into the movies, my book is nothing compared to this. I'm pretty sure there's a child abduction scene as well. The publisher did say they would find it harder to market to a younger audience, I read over the email and I sort of get where they're coming from but they also said they weren't pivoting to that genre at the time anyway, they may have done since, (they have). I guess I would've had to wait ages for them to reconsider it, which would've kept me from doing my own stuff. I keep reminding myself there was nothing to suggest it wouldn't be changed in some way and I have no patience to fix whatever they thought was wrong with it, I just can't believe they had no idea that one of the highest selling YA series was incredibly graphic compared to what I wrote, and that'd be impossible to pitch it to the same audience. I can't be bothered changing my other books either. They seem to have pretty good graphic artists for their covers but I have no idea if they're actually selling well, and it is still a vehicle for one person's books who's decided to give other people a leg-up. Now I'm stupidly considering if I can give them something else without redoing too much of anything I've already got, because I stupidly feel like I have an in-road with them now.
So this has stupidly lit a tiny fire under my butt and I'm looking through my uni work and horribly old stuff looking for shit I can fix up and send to these people should they open again for submissions. And now I'm getting fixated on it. I found a short film I wrote about the Virgin Mary meeting a dead rape victim and trying to advocate for her not being killed. It was weird, I can't even tell you what mark I got unless it's in with my other stuff. I've still got the treatment from third year that was based on an idea I wrote in an English exam but I haven't any motivation to actually work on it. I have to remember how stressful it was waiting for responses, then going through the process again. They need at least 60000 so I'm not willing to tack on another 10 to something I did recently, particularly when I was going to take some lurid shit out of it. I guess I could fuck about with it more, I don't fucking know. Plus it'll be yet another thing I lock myself out of and I'm not willing to do that. It's why I'd rather use something old than something newer. Starting over from scratch just feels like too much to ask of myself right now. There's only one thing I could maybe use but if I'm really going to pull a novel out of my ass like I did last time just to placate myself, I have to be willing to put up with all the pain and sense of pointlessness when I realise it's a waste of time to even try. I don't even know if the response I got was genuinely blowing smoke up my ass or if it was sincere. I only know it came from someone who hated getting rejected so he decided to go it alone and do it himself, so to speak, and do I really want to work with another person like that. The only difference was, I wasn't aware of my old publisher doing her own shit she wanted to release. My biggest achievement was technically finishing a very old thing I couldn't do in high school which had a scene I'd been playing in my head for over two decades, and I somehow got it on paper after all that time. Now and then I manage to squish a couple of random ideas into one story and make that work. Do I genuinely have it in me to do this all over again? I could be really cheeky and send them something see if they want more then write it. I'm just not in the mood to try. They also still only want commercial adult fiction, not YA. So I have to wonder how much they're promoting the YA books they did publish.
I wouldn't be sitting here reconsidering it if my first go around had just looked more professional. It's inordinately frustrating to have gone through that fucking stress to have it end up an embarrassment and nothing worth my own sense of pride. I can only be thankful I got them back at all.
I should note here as I've not done that yet, that I recently agreed to help a kid get their story published because it seems like a really good idea worth telling and that her dad didn't have to spend an arm and a leg to make it happen. I've put the thought on the backburner now because it is entirely dependent on if she can write this, it's really cool she can even be open about it with her own parents as opposed to me, who still wishes I hid all this from everyone and just written for some trashy series in secret. Telling this person I could help also meant at least exposing my children's book, I'm very against exposing my other stuff, even the traditional books, I'm not thrilled with promoting them. My only other option is to find someone who can help me promote what I have, but I don't know if the job place I'm seeing tomorrow can put me anywhere I might get some help or at least meet people. I'm not opposed to lending what I know to some local organisation that works with kids, it wouldn't totally suck for me to do this, I used to be against it, but now I don't care as much anymore. I'm like, fuck it, I have nothing better to do I'm just that desperate to never work in an office again I'll do anything to avoid it. I'm going to have to be as firm as possible about this, I'm going to make it clear I simply can't apply for any admin assistant role available right now, and if I do get back into data entry, it'd have to be somewhere that doesn't enforce militant KPIs or at the least just leaves me to do the job without micromanaging me. I don't trust those places would be as kind about my errors, it's what made my old job feel safer even if it was driving me insane, I wasn't in trouble it was simply annoying having to account for every mistake.
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