You Are Not Prepared

Fair warning, this is going to sound like a downer at first. But stick with me! I have a point!

This is for all you first time novelists out there. Raise your hands! Yes, you of the smooth baby cheeks and the bright happy smiles! Give a shout! We love you guys, with your enthusiasm and your checklists and your preparedness!

Oh yes, this is not about people who haven't researched the business yet. This is about those of you whose metaphorical writing bathrooms look like this:



You are READY. You know who to query, how to query, how to reply to queries. You know that you'll get a lot of rejection letters, both form and not. You know that after you get requests for your manuscript, you'll get still more rejections before you find the right agent. You know you have to just keep querying and querying and querying until you find the right person, place and time.

Except, I hate to break it to you, but: You are not prepared.

No amount of mental visualization and stocking of metaphorical toilet paper can prepare you for the mess ahead. Maybe you'll be fine at first. Maybe for the first year, the rejection letters will roll of your shoulders like water off a duck.* Or maybe you'll be one of the lucky few who finds an agent right away! Maybe you'll even get a book deal easily too. I'm not saying it's impossible to succeed.

I'm just saying that eventually, whether it's now or somewhere further down your journey toward publication/regular authordom... It's going to get to you. The rejections and the "No"s and the feeling like you aren't good enough, or the shitty reviews on Amazon, or the rude letters from people who disagreed with a point you made. Eventually, some day, sooner or later (and for your sake I hope it's later), you are going to be broadsided.

Geez, you're saying. What is the point of telling us this, if we cannot prepare?!

Well, partly it's because I love prepared memes.



But MOSTLY it's because... When the time comes that your total unpreparedness hits you... Remember: You are not alone. We've all been there.** It's okay to be unprepared. It's okay to have off days and to screw up and to doubt yourself. You're human!***

And at the end of the day, after you've had your breakdown and dramatically torn your clothes in mourning and printed out your latest magnum opus in order to symbolically burn it on the pyre of suck, you will pick yourself up, and dust yourself off, and get ready for the War of Creative Life all over again. Because on the scale of writerly badassitude, this is you:



* What? That is a thing! Ducks are very water-resistant. Stop judging me.

** Or if we haven't, we'll join you shortly.

*** We hope. Unless you are an alien. Then, I dunno... You might be on your own! But at least Kanye will still think you're hawt.