Monday, April 27, 2015

Reflection #7/40

In 1998, when I was still living in Lexington, I started writing a surreal detective story that was heavily influenced by Raymond Chandler and Lewis Carroll. I was a little ways into it when I thought, what the hell, why not make this into a novel. I had always wanted to write a novel and I figured I might as well prove to myself that I could do it.

I worked on the book on and off and in 2002, when I was living in Columbus, I finished the first draft. I titled it The Lobster-Quadrille. I shared the first draft with some friends, who gave me feedback, and then started work on the second draft. When we moved to Cincinnati in 2005 I didn’t have a job at first, which gave me time to write. I finished the second draft in January 2006. It was about 83,000 words long.

I did some research and found the publisher that I thought would be the best fit for my novel. I wrote up a proposal, with cover letter and synopsis and sample chapters. I mailed it off. Soon afterwards, I got a rejection letter. And then I . . . did nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Why would you give up after just one rejection? I have no idea. It makes no sense.

Now I’ve waited so long that there’s a glaring omission in the text. It wasn’t meant to be a period piece, but if you were to read it now you would wonder, why don’t any of the characters have cell phones?

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