Mountain Climbing is like novel writing

[Brian G Turner]

So far as I can tell, getting published is, for many, a combination of perseverance and an understanding of the market.

Perseverance is the hardest thing. I often think of being an aspiring novelist as like climbing a mountain - excepting that every time you think you've reached the top, you suddenly look up to see yet another sheer peak looming above you. If you know you can do it you take it as is required - part by part, a bit at a time.

The market understanding is to simply ensure the effort is not naive. From what I've read up on agents 95% of what they reject is outright amateur in approach - there's a swathe of simple errors an aspirant can make, resulting in an amateur presentation to people who demand professionalism. After that it's other issues. In mountaineering terms, if you don't have a good idea of how to properly use your equipment, you've got a good chance of falling.

At the end of the day mountain climbing can be fun. But if you want to enter commercial markets you absolutely need to have a good understanding of what mountain climbing is all about. As with any discipline there are many opinions - everyone has their favourite route, preferred peaks, and different ways of ascending.

But as with mountain climbing, at the end of the day, it's between you and the mountain. And the mountain will never make you fail. Only you can.

I still figure trying to become a published novelist is like mountain climbing.

 

[Twelve]

Mountain climbing...or a marathon. Winning it isn't particularly important...just being able to finish the seemingly impossibly long race is what counts. So many other of my peers have given up due to lack of endurance. But I have to keep pumping on, trying, trying, one foot after another...

12

 

[Brian G Turner]

Exactly right - it seems so much like an endurance issue.

 

[Foxbat]

I suppose we are all coming from it at different angles. I've had about half a dozen short stories published in the last ten years ( I have probably written about a hundred...most really bad)and, yes, you are right about the importance of perseverence.
I have never used an agent but it is getting to the stage where having an agent is the only way to go. It will probably come as no surprise then that the last story I had published was about 5 years ago.

But all this becomes irrelevant and, as Twelve put it, just doing it is the important thing.
The crux of the matter is that I don't even try to get published any more. Although I know I should. It's just so difficult finding the right outlet. So many small mags have folded (my mainstay for publication).
So, why do I still write?
Because it's there. And in that sense, yes, it's a mountain. Yours sounds like Everest (I sincerely hope you make the summit). Me, I'm happy plodding up the paths of Ben Nevis