My final lesson for this part of the journey.
So... it's been a few more months than I had initially anticipated after sending out my last blogpost (which may or may not be up depending on how things go... you'll understand in a bit after reading this). I'm writing this now on Halloween, the day before I began to write Beyond around... 2 years ago? Or 3 years ago? I'm getting old...
Anyways, since we last spoke and I "officially" (ish, we'll be revisiting that as well) I ended up meeting an illustrator, Jack Clymer. Jack and I were connected by a mutual friend (who happens to be a Paralympic record holder for his division) and he ended up really liking my work, just as much as I liked his. We began to collaborate on Tomorrow Is Today and ended up making some really good progress, but the moment we began to bring queries into the mix... I was just so exhausted from the process with Beyond that I wasn't able to do it justice. It ultimately lead to getting zero responses from anyone I'd queried, leading us to shelve the project in hopes of returning to it when we had more resources, rather than just self-publish as I'd already done before.
While we were debating what to do next, he asked out of curiosity if he could read Beyond as well. We weren't planning to do much with it aside from potentially some additional illustrations for an overhaul to the website, and I had sent it to him without much expectation. After all, everyone else (aside from my grandmother, the first true reader of Beyond) hadn't gotten through the first few chapters. Even then, those who had gotten farther than the first few chapters had taken months to do it, so it'd probably take a couple months to hear anything at all.
He read it in a week.
I was flabbergasted, impressed, and honestly just... happy, to hear that someone else had read it. Moreover, someone who had no real incentive or reason to say that they'd liked it... liked it. In fact, he loved the story, so much so that we ended up deciding to start coming up with illustrations for the book, since his style seemed to match up so well with it.
It took some time, but we hammered out some character designs and I honestly couldn't be happier; especially with Clarence and Fig's. I'd share 'em here, but I've gotta keep one card up my sleeve, don't I?
In the background, I've also been working with a girl named Dimi Deju who's doing a startup to help aspiring authors reach their goals. I didn't quite fit her ideal customer profile, but she and I got to talking and we ended up getting along to the point where she made a custom roadmap for me, and is working with me on a weekly basis to try and go at querying beyond one more time.
The reason why I'm writing this post though is to set myself a reminder, and a lesson I've learned over the past few months as working with these people has allowed me to regain some of the initial thrill I had before going through queries.
You can't do this alone.
I mean this in the sense that when going through this process, wiriting out a query letter, a book, anything really in the literary sphere. You can't go at this alone. You need to reach out to other people, and find people who believe in you, however long it takes. Or at least, I needed to do this. After getting a group of people who read my book and actually hearing them say hey liked it, and why they liked it... it helps. Much more than I'd realized.
As of writing this, I'm terrified. So god awfully terrified. I took one look at QueryTracker tonight in preparation for the submissions we'll be doing and... it just zapped away the immense amount of motivation I had. I hated being rejected, and I hate the idea of having to go through this process again. To get my hopes up and have them crash down over... and over... and over again. It kills that spark I have, dousing its flame and reducing it to barely an ember which I can barely keep alive.
It's my hope though, that the people I've found on this path... can help me backup as I stumble and fall over. I'll need them to. So that one day, someday, I might finally meet you.
My reader.
The one whom I have, and will always address these posts to, even in times when I scream loudly into darkness which I know nothing lurks within. Only the empty.
It's now November first, the day I started to write Beyond, even though I started this post on Halloween. If I could see where I am now where I was before... I wonder how I'd react.
I wonder how I'll react a year from now, if I can make it any farther.
Thanks for reading this, reader. I mean it.
I'll be seeing you.
- Ud Din
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