And so I Write on…

Here’s the thing about me, I love stories about love. I consume romantic media of all types: books, movies, shows. The early flickers of attraction that grow into something deeper—a hook that gets me every time. Naturally, romance permeates every story I write, whether YA or adult, fantasy or contemporary, even the historical based on true events that I wrote. The promise of the premise you’ll get from me every time is that at least two of my characters are falling in love.

Here’s another thing about me, I’ve been writing for about a decade, agented for five of those, and I’ve been on sub every year since 2019. I haven’t sold a book though. I am the Sisyphus of Submission. A protagonist desperately in search of her Happily Ever After. There are a lot of posts out there about getting an agent or getting a book deal, but far fewer about writers like me who find ourselves in the long sub game. Publishing isn’t a meritocracy, for many of us it’s a marathon. All we can do is keep writing, hoping one of our projects will be “the one.”

Writing is an isolating endeavor on a good day, but there is a unique loneliness to being perpetually on sub. With each book that dies in the pursuit of a publishing deal, the harder it is to summon the courage to keep trying. Every time I relegate a project to the graveyard that is my hard drive, my embarrassment flares. Yes, still writing. No, still not published. I know the questions from loved ones and friends come from a good place, but it doesn’t make it any less excruciating to admit that another year has passed without achieving my goal—my heart’s one true desire.

The rub is I cannot think about anything else. The yearning to be published consumes me. I mark the year in goal posts of missed chances. If I’m not on sub by the summer, I can say goodbye to getting a deal by the end of the year. If I don’t have an offer within the first month or two of being on sub, I probably won’t get one at all. It doesn’t matter if my presumptions are false, they feel real—a yardstick I torment myself with.

I am the portrait of the very thing I promised myself I wouldn’t be—the tortured artist. It’s a cage of my own making, rationally I know this, but my heart throbs with each cut into the same scar. I won’t lie, I struggle to be proud of where I am on this journey. But I do credit myself for the resilience to keep writing and keep putting my work out there. I am that rom com heroine, stubbornly working to prove herself against all odds. At the end of the day, I’m just a girl standing in front of publishing, asking it to love one of my works enough to make me an offer.