Failure and Determination

I recently participated in Nathan Bransford's Surprisingly Essential First Page contest, found here: http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/01/surprisingly-essential-first-page.html That was a difficult thing for me to do, but I had a current work in progress that I thought I would put out there and see what kind of reaction it got. It didn't get shredded by the few people that took on the task of trying to critique all the entries (there were nearly 700) but it didn't get any "wows" either. And I didn't win. Or even make the finalists list. I don't think I was even considered to be honest, and I can see why. The finalists really did have awesome first pages, especially the winner. Duh, right? Well, often I can find a way of saying, "Pshaw, my stuff is as good as that." Ha! Not this time. There were some good pages. The winner, who went by Heather!Ann! wrote a great first page that I definitely want to read more of. Nicely done Heather, if that's your real name. I was impressed.

There's nothing quite like a contest to make you feel inadequate. Well, not if you win the contest, but if you don't even place in a contest like this you begin to question yourself. If my first page wasn't good enough to be in the top ten of 675, then how is it going to be good enough to stand out in the thousands of stories that agents see every day? One person commented on the blog after the contest and stated that he wished he had never entered, because now his confidence was shaken. I can understand that. But does that mean I'm going to quit. Nope. I don't think I'm going to get any worse at this whole writing thing, at least I hope not, so what do I have to lose? I keep writing, I keep getting better, and maybe one day, that awesome first page will be mine. I still have plenty of stories to tell, and who knows which one of those might be the one that makes everyone stop and think, "Hmm. This might be the next big thing."

Writers often hear stories of how many times they were rejected before they finally got a book deal, just as entrepreneurs and inventors hear about how many time businesses and inventions failed before they finally succeeded. That's what I like to keep in the back of my mind. Every failure is another step toward success. There are those who succeed with their first novels and I congratulate them wholeheartedly. Jessica Verday, one of the members of the Querytracker.net community just signed with Rachel Vater, and she had the enviable displeasure of having to choose between four well-known agents that offered to represent her book. Wow! Is that better than paying your dues and getting rejected hundreds of times? I would say so! I also think Jessica paid her dues through her work, perfecting and polishing it until it was ready to go out. Alas, such fortune did not occur for me. I have learned much, and I do believe I am improving, so I will continue to tap away. I will wear keyboards out. I will watch laptops go obsolete, and maybe one day, it will happen to me, too. I just hope I'm still young enough to enjoy it.