The Part Where You Deal With It
Most of my life has gone into seeking validation. From the moment the thought formed that in order to attain validation for my writing, and by no simple extension myself, I have invested all of my energy in doing so. Decades now. Every hour and minute you can break down in those years, lost. I thought I had finally found it in 2007. I had sold my novel, The Book of Elizabeth, to a publisher. I had sold some short stories, and I thought - I knew - I had made it. All those years and frustrations, those bloody failures and false starts; justified. Redeemed. Validated. Then the last three years went by without the book coming out. Without getting paid. Without any account for the delay. I never got a clear answer as to why - there was always a different reason, or easy deflection - so I don't know if it was that the book wasn't what they thought it would be. Or they just had no idea what to do with it. Or they found something new and shiny and like other authors, I wa...