On the Hooves of Failure

That could be the title of my autobiography! It’s been a pattern. I wrote my first book while I taught high school (I used that in-class experience later while teaching writing workshops at conferences, retreats and on cruises). Though my agent was unable to sell my first novel, I had written its first draft while working as a weight loss counselor. That experience later helped in writing the proposal for a cookbook which didn’t sell despite three agents trying.

I wrote another book, food themed, and that led to my decision to try to sell the cookbook again. It failed with another agent. I raised two boys. As a writer, I was lucky enough to stay home, be involved in my boys’ educations, and speak at the schools. One thing I did was speak on writing topics. Along the way I failed to sell my third novel.   

On the side, I did some in-home cooking instruction. I coupled that with my experience cooking with my hubby's Chinese family and my weight loss counseling expertise, pitched myself, and was paid for my food thoughts and recipes. A dollar a word seemed like a lot of money for something that was sheer pleasure.

The cookbook set aside again, I started a suspense novel that involves food and Asian themes, then I tossed in an amateur sleuth who is a cooking instructor. Somewhere in the middle of all this I started a horror novel that instead became an award-winning screenplay that didn't sell, the same fate of eleven of my subsequent award-wining screenplays. But the experience improved my fiction, and my sample scripts ended up catching the attention of a producer which landed me a connection and job with an indie director and later script doctor work.

I have eight file drawers filled with all of my drafts. After writing for over 20 years, my “submissions” spread sheet has far more rejections on it than acceptances. My dear “sister,” Janet, made a great suggestion. I shouldn’t call them rejections; I should call them “declines.” So I changed the heading of that column. She was right. The publishers declined my submissions; that didn’t mean they’d rejected me or even my skills. They simply had declined that project. For whatever reason.

My life seems to have the theme of: OK start another book but do something else at the same time.

I continued to edit for others, becoming a script and book doctor.  I continued to teach writing. In fits and starts I wrote for newspapers and magazines and blogs. The exposure got me writer-for-hire gigs and allowed me to coach and midwife successful books for other writers.

Another agent took on the cookbook, she brought a contract to me, I signed and the photographer backed out at the last minute. The cookbook went on hold again. From the time I started writing to today, I’ve had poems, shorts, essays and flash pieces accepted and published, both in paper and on line. These were the little things that continued to feed my confidence that I would eventually sell a longer work and be able to do one of those fun key note speeches about my “overnight success.”

Last year, a client referred me for a celebrity ghostwriting gig that some would feel was the writing job of a lifetime. It might have allowed my husband to retire, but it ended up getting sabotaged and thrown into a tailspin.

Even that traumatic experience ended up being grist for the mill and there are 300 pages of that story in my memory stick now. Along the way I’ve been offered representation by seven agents. Yet none of my own book-length works--fiction or cookbook--has been published.

In true lemons-to-lemonade style, I don’t discount all the benefits I got along the way from those efforts. I am proof that success can follow on the hooves of failure, IF you parlay the experiences. Looking back on it, all my writing detours led to something good. If nothing else they gave me a theme for the column I write for BTS Book Reviews, appropriately name “Karen’s Writing Detours.”

 All I do now to make money, to forward my name recognition, to land that next cruise gig, to reach out for another chance to write, all my opportunities come on the hooves of failure.
--Inkpot


 

Thoughts on motherhood and writing

Is there a connection between mothering and publishing?

Yes! Early on there was a positive correlation, on the side of publishing. Every time a baby popped out a book did too. It only happened twice, as there were just two babies--but it looked like a trend.

Then the correlation, er, shifted. My first year without a contract was 2001, the year I home-schooled my daughter to save her sparkle from the bullies. At the start of September that year, I called my agent and pushed back the appointment in New York we'd set for September 11th. That appointment was never rescheduled. While this was a setback career-wise, it was an advantage for child-rearing: it's pretty hard to fulfill two full-time career obligations at once. One thing I know for certain: it's not about quality time with children, it's about quantity time. I was blessed with just two priceless and fragile lives to nurture, whereas on the other hand, "Of making many books there is no end." (Ecclesiastes.)

Some mischievous force often seemed to present direct choices between mothering and career. In the early years of my series my agent came to Colorado for a conference. It was the exact weekend my daughter received a surprise invitation to the National Ski Team qualifying weekend at Breckenridge. Anguished, I consulted our older and wiser Brother of the Quill Jim Hester, the father of three grown sons, about which to choose. He said, "I've never known anyone who regretted choosing family over career." Another year I was asked by Dartmouth to give an alumni seminar on my own work. I was thrilled until I realized it was the exact week our daughter would compete in the bagpiping World Championships in Edinburgh. Fortunately, by then I knew which was the better choice. Jim was right: I have no regrets.

Yesterday a feature on Jan Karon in the Wall Street Journal said her hugely successful writing career started at age 50, roughly my age now. My youngest daughter leaves the nest next year; perhaps the correlation will shift again.
-Storm Petrel

Light My Shoe?

OK, some creepy guy on a flight to Denver sets his shoe on fire to cover up his stink. He gets national attention. So that's what it takes! Silly me. I thought writing a book (maybe also to cover up my stink), succeeding with contests, then marketing it with all my might, was the way to go. Silly, silly me. I'm getting out the matches! Oh, sisters, I may need to go into a pyromania 12-step program soon! Heat generating from the Inkpot