An Unfound Door, Take... Three?
May. 14th, 2023 07:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingI stopped writing An Unfound Door at the end of 2022 for three reasons.
First, the artists I commissioned for character illustrations flaked on me. That really hurt, emotionally and creatively. Not to mention financially. My resources are extremely limited, and knowing that I couldn’t rely on collaborators made me feel as though… I’m not sure how to put it, except to say that suddenly everything felt impossible.
Second, I was reading a lot of YA fiction in order to get a handle on the sort of "comparative titles" required for a serious tradpub agent pitch, and these books were so offensively awful that I stopped reading all fiction altogether.
Third, given that I was writing chapters that felt finished at 2k words, I realized that An Unfound Door is not going to be 60k words long.
But what if...
- I create illustrations myself.
- The story contains adult sexuality.
- The illustrations are a bit racy too.
- It’s a novella, and that’s okay.
- I can publish it myself even if it’s not suitable for the tradpub market.
So how about I just write what makes me happy?
First, the artists I commissioned for character illustrations flaked on me. That really hurt, emotionally and creatively. Not to mention financially. My resources are extremely limited, and knowing that I couldn’t rely on collaborators made me feel as though… I’m not sure how to put it, except to say that suddenly everything felt impossible.
Second, I was reading a lot of YA fiction in order to get a handle on the sort of "comparative titles" required for a serious tradpub agent pitch, and these books were so offensively awful that I stopped reading all fiction altogether.
Third, given that I was writing chapters that felt finished at 2k words, I realized that An Unfound Door is not going to be 60k words long.
But what if...
- I create illustrations myself.
- The story contains adult sexuality.
- The illustrations are a bit racy too.
- It’s a novella, and that’s okay.
- I can publish it myself even if it’s not suitable for the tradpub market.
So how about I just write what makes me happy?
