The Trouble with Writing a Novel.

Over the last seven years I’ve written forty two short stories and a novella. Twenty four of the short stories have been published by various levels of the small press, and the novella has been accepted three times, only to be withdrawn each time for reasons I needn’t go into. That bit was easy; cyber space is replete with opportunities to get short stories published by the small press.

So now I’ve written a novel. What do I do with it? Well, I don’t actually have to do anything with it; it was written primarily for the sake of taking the journey, and that end has now been met. I’ve said often enough that being published should not be a writer’s definition of success, and I hold to the view. At the same time, the desire to communicate with the world at large seems to be an integral part of the make up of most creative practitioners. There’s nothing wrong with that, as long as the work was created for its own sake in the first place. So it is with me, and I would like the novel to be published. But getting a novel published is quite different from getting short stories published. The field is much narrower, more competitive, and more focused on genre specifics.

There are two branches of the publishing world: the small press and the mainstream. The former will mostly take submissions direct from writers; the latter deal almost exclusively through literary agents. And so I have spent a lot of time recently trawling through listings of small press publishers and agents. I haven’t yet found anything or anybody suitable. There’s something about every one I’ve come across that either disbars me or puts me off. They have strictly defined word count limits; their genre sensibilities don’t quite accord with the nature of my novel; some of them have badly designed and badly written websites that simply don’t inspire confidence. But the biggest problem of all is their attitude.

The novel market is seen in very commercial terms now; the novel is not so much a part of the creative canon as simply a commercial commodity. And because the publisher is the body that deals with the commercial side of things, they seem to see themselves as the most important element in the literary spectrum. Their authors’ guidelines tend to be brusque, offhand and patronising; they give the impression that they’re doing you a big favour merely by offering the remote prospect that they might even consider looking at your work. I’m sure that attitude changes when they find someone who has a potential best seller on offer. One literary agent writes on her website ‘nothing excites me more than the whiff of a best seller.’ Quite. Then the writer comes into his or her own again, because now he or she becomes the means by which the publisher can make a lot of money. That’s what most of them are in it for. Sales volume is their unashamed definition of success.

So what do I do, short of self-publishing which is a road I don’t want to take? I have a novel that is, at 73,000 words, on the short side of standard. It is an episodic work that uses a fantastical journey to explore a variety of spiritual principles largely drawn from Buddhism and the Tao. I can’t see that being a best seller. I find it quite impossible to deal with people who talk down to me or bullshit me. And I have no interest in being either rich or famous.

Be content with the journey, I suppose.