When The Big Project is a learning experience (and not much else)

Every writer has heard the phrase “having a book inside you.” It definitely sounds like The Big Project I talked about in my last post, only it’s unexecuted—and may never be. After all, if you’re using this phrase to talk about yourself and your own book, you’re saying two things: (a) your book is still imagined and not being brought to fruition (that is, “inside you” doesn’t mean “mostly inside you, but a few pages have made their way into a notebook or Word document”), and (b) you know you have an idea for a book but are doing nothing about it except saying it’s there.

Here’s the thing: having a book inside you is pretty much risk-free (minus, of course, the biggest risk of all, which is the massive regret that comes from not trying something you really want to do). When your book is safely nestled away in your brain, you don’t have to worry about all the steps along the way—the maze of details that you have to keep track of, the fear that all your friends and family and (gasp!) the Internet will hate your book and shame you for being the fraud you tell yourself you are, the possibility that this book you’re guiding into the world may never reach the publication goals you have for it.

And that possibility is very real. It wasn’t till I went to graduate school that I began to hear people talking about the obvious: not every book, even those written by published authors, makes its way into readers’ hands. Even if you’ve published a book before, you may end up writing a dud that provokes a (hopefully) polite “We’ll pass” from every editor who reads it. And if you’ve never published a book before, that Big Project you’ve spent years perfecting may never be ready for the big time.

That sucks. And as a writer of short stories and novels, I’m still waiting for publication in the latter. But even if no one outside my writers’ group ends up reading the couple novels I’ve written, I’ll never regret the time and energy I spent crafting them because while I was creating them, I was also re-creating myself as well.

That may sound bogus if you’re reeling from a recent rejection, wondering if you’re cut out for this whole writing thing, or still stuck on, “Wait, this awesome book I’ve just written might not be ready for publication?” So here are some tips for maintaining perspective when your book isn’t as well-received by the publishing industry as you’d like:

The publishing industry is bigger than just traditional large publishing houses. When you’ve put down the Cheetos and are ready to make a clear-eyed plan for your book, ask yourself why it didn’t do well. If your book never made it further than the form-rejection stage, ask a brutally honest friend for feedback—and be prepared to hear things like, “The voice was boring,” “There was no plot,” or “Your writing style needs work.”

On the other hand, maybe your book is well-written but is intended for an audience that traditional publishers don’t find lucrative enough to sell to. Or maybe your goals for publication are more modest than what a large publishing house needs to justify taking you on (for instance, if you’d be happy with selling a hundred copies to friends and family). If the quality of the writing is there and it’s simply business issues standing in the way of publication—assuming you have the wherewithal to deal with those issues—consider self-publishing or a small press.

Consider possibilities for large-scale revision. Sometimes writers get so far into the weeds that we forget to look up at the whole landscape. Maybe the reason your novel didn’t get picked up isn’t because your descriptions weren’t beautiful enough or your dialogue didn’t have enough pizzazz—or maybe it’s because your main character’s motivations don’t resonate with the reader. Think about these really big changes that you haven’t considered before—maybe they even scare you—if you’re going to embark on another revision.

Inventory what you’ve learned from this project. Even if you ultimately decide never to work on this book again in any way, shape, or form, you’ve still gotten something from it: you’ve learned things about writing and about yourself that you didn’t know before. You’ve taught yourself about discipline, about craft, about observing the people around you so you can write snappy dialogue that doesn’t sound forced. You’ve learned where you tend to get bogged down, what writing techniques and which parts of the story arc intimidate you, how to balance the details of a plot with the overall story you’ve created. With all this new awareness and all these new skills, you’ll be better prepared to embark on the next project that catches and holds your attention—and that book will be better off for the time and effort you put into this one.