Loose Change

After a whirlwind of activity at my last convention, I realized one there is one overwhelming emotion at writer conventions: nervousness that can shoot up to terror.  Writers tend to be solitary and at conventions you not only meet people you don’t know, but you often need to sell them on yourself and your product.  This is not necessarily a skill all people have, especially when the product is your imagination.

I really see this when I take pitches.  Every one of the authors at the last convention I went to, from unpublished to multi-published, told me they were very nervous.  I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my intimidating presence – after all,  I want to hear their ideas, I want them to work with us, I want them to submit even if we don’t accept all the manuscripts that come in.  I think most of the authors realized that and had a good time (or at least no longer experienced terror) by the time we were through.  To some extent both of us had to do that selling of ourselves along with everything else After all, I have to sell my company to them by what I say or do…although I admit selling a publishing company seems much easier than selling a story.  .

But I have much more confidence in my company and my editing than many authors do in themselves, maybe because stories are so much more personal than a company is. I represent my partners, my editors and the hard work of a lot of authors with a multitude of stories when I meet someone as Editor-in-Chief.  My concern is to make sure I represent all of them as best I can.  I may be afraid I haven’t done well by Loowis and the gang, but there’s relatively little of my own ego or self-worth involved.  Mostly.

Authors have a lot more of themselves invested. It’s almost impossible to remember during a pitch but a rejection—or acceptance—of a story isn’t a personal acceptance or rejection of you.  Acceptance is good but it doesn’t mean you don’t have to do a good job for the next story and the next. It’s that particular story you wrote that was accepted. Rejection may mean the story won’t sell as well as it could with another company or it may mean the author’s skill isn’t yet up to what a publisher needs.  It doesn’t mean you aren’t a worthwhile writer or human being.   It means trying again.  That’s all.