Always a Bridesmaid, Never a Bride!

I have a confession to make. I withheld some writing-related information from you this week. See, I had to sit with it a while before I blogged about it. Or, more accurately, I had to throw myself a little pity party. And now that the world's smallest fiddle has finished playing the world's saddest song, I'm ready to talk about it!

So, remember that CONNections Contest sponsored by the Connecticut RWA chapter that I entered an eon ago and finaled in a half-eon ago? (I'd link all that stuff up, but there's nothing new on their website, so I won't bother!) Well, on Wednesday, I heard the results. Living in Sin placed third.

Again.

I know, I know. I should be happy that I finaled. I should be thrilled that I placed. That I should have done so not once, but twice, should have made me ecstatic.

But the truth is, I was none of those things. I was disappointed. More than a little. And disheartened. More than a little. Because, you see, I'd done quite a bit of work on the manuscript between that contest entry and the Golden Rose entry (where it also finished third) and, I'll be honest, I hoped to do better this time around. I didn't have my heart set on winning or anything, but second place would have been awfully nice! Not to mention it would have validated the changes I made.

Yes, a second place or better finish would have said, this manuscript is getting closer. It's good. It's almost there.

Instead, what I felt I got was, Sorry, this really isn't ready for prime time and never will be. Go back to the drawing board.

I have to admit, I had a real crisis of faith in this manuscript.

So, what's the first thing I did? Well, of course, I cried on my critique partners' shoulders. All of whom basically told me to quit my caterwaulin' and suck it up. (In the nicest way possible, of course. Erica, in particular, gave a fabulous pep talk.)

And now that it's had a few days to sink in, I know this isn't remotely as awful as it seemed at first blush.

We are, after all, talking about two editors and two houses. Hardly the entire romance novel publishing industry by any stretch of the imagination. So two of them didn't think it was the best manuscript in the competition and beg me for a full. There's more fish in the sea. (Not a lot lot more fish, but more than two for sure!)

And there's no accounting for personal taste. For whatever reason, these two editors liked other manuscripts in the competition better than mine. So what? That doesn't mean there isn't an editor or agent somewhere in the big wide world who's going to love my story and want to buy it (or sell it, as the case may be).

But, I'm also willing to entertain the possibility that the doomsday message I felt I read in those contest results that first day is the right one. Maybe I won't ever be able to sell Living in Sin. Hey, it's my first book. (Well, not counting all the horribly atrocious ones I wrote as a teenager. I don't have to count those, do I?) Most published authors didn't sell their first books, after all. Those who did often admit to having written the first book from scratch several times.

What published authors didn't do was give up on writing or trying to get publish what they wrote. And I have no intention of giving up on writing (as if I could--I'm an addict, peeps!) or on trying to publish what I write (because as much as I'm addicted to writing, I'm addicted to trying to share what I write with the world). There may come a day when I decide my first book is just never going to sell and I have to put it on the shelf. I'm okay with that. I'm nowhere near that point. I know that. But it's nice to be able to acknowledge this fact and be comfortable with it.

And I am.

Mostly :->!

(Oh, and ya'll should read Lacey's blog today while you're at it!)