The Big Idea

In my unguarded (i.e., optimistic) moments, I sometimes wonder if underselling oneself is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  For example, sending your writing only to small publishers might lead to small returns.  The big guys are scary, however.

Sometimes it seems a small press can’t handle big ideas.  Some fiction goes beyond the usual need to tell a story and contains a much deeper message.  After all, all books are farewell letters to the world.  We want to say something important.

Although I keep a spreadsheet with my submissions, sometimes stories get lost in the mix.  Once in a while I’ll stumble upon one that I’d forgotten, an orphan of my feverish imagination.  I wonder why I never tried to get it published.  Then I look at my spreadsheet.

It is kind of like an idea graveyard.  Big ideas, small ideas.  Lying side by side in unmarked graves since, never having been published, they’ll never be read by anyone other than their loving author.  The only one who lays flowers at their tombs.

I read stories of authors who, on a whim, send a novel to a big publisher and become famous directly.  Far more, I suspect, share my underselling dreams.  You see, as an author it is very hard to tell if you’re getting through.

For example, I like to write scary stories.  They don’t scare me, however, because I know what is going to happen.  I measure their scare factor by whether they get published or not.  None of those I consider truly scary ever has.  Appropriate for an idea graveyard.

We writers are the makers of content.  Big publishers need new content all the time, but they don’t trust new talent.  They prefer old dogs to do old tricks.  Once published, always published.  Alas, poor Yorick.

In an unguarded moment I sent my pitch to yet another literary agent.  Now I wait the requisite two months to hear back.  In the meantime it seems that some graves may need to be dug.  And I’ve got nothing else to do.