Climb every mountain

Louise here.
I met a sci-fi author recently named Paul Black. He's got a series of novels (starting with The Tels) which are receiving lots of acclaim. He's a real writer. Has won several awards. Just like my friend Harry Hunsicker. He writes a cool detective series whose lead character is named Lee Henry Oswald. Clever, huh? And my friend K.L. Cook (who I know as Kenny-baby, since we went to high school together). He just won the Willa Cather award for fiction for his novel The Girl from Charnelle. He won the Prairie Schooner prize for his first collection of short stories. The man is a ROCK STAR!

You know what writers talk about when we gather? The publishing industry.

How are your books selling? Is your agent taking good care of you? Does he fight with the publisher on your behalf or abandon you after the deal's done? Is your publisher supportive? Are they putting any money behind your books? How are your marketing your books? How are the book signings going? Did you hire your own publicist? How's that working out? Is it worth the money?

You know what we never talk about? Writing.

Can you picture the Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and friends) sitting around the pub enjoying a pint and discussing their agents? Or their publicists? I guess they might have -- maybe it's inevitable. Maybe it's a tragic symptom of Post-Traumatic Writer's Syndrome. Part of the disease. But my guess is that they had more important things on their minds. Like ideas. And character markers. And plot and theme and the rhythm of language.

This is not just another rant about the publishing industry and how Barnes & Noble has ruined it for us all. The demise of The Shop Around the Corner. But it IS another rant about how hard it is to scratch your way up the hill out there. It's not just a hill anymore. It's a gravel hill. Covered with broken beer bottles and barbed wire and smelly, rotting bodies of those who have given up before you. It's like climbing Everest except that the bodies aren't preserved by the cold. And stationed along the path are people whose entire job is to shout you down by doing everything possible to get your work off their desk. Immediately. And shipped back to you with a cryptic, arrogant rejection letter. (I have about a hundred of these in my files.)

Happily, I made it up that particular hill. I have a contract. And an agent (Lee Hough, who does, by the way, act as my advocate with my publisher and who did not abandon me as soon as the contract was signed). And a publicist. (Lisa Taylor, without whom I would have jumped off a cliff by now and who IS, most decidedly, worth the money).

But here's the thing: once you make it up Everest (and make it down alive), then you have to climb K-2. And it doesn't get any easier. See, this is what no one tells you.

Which is why good writers give up every day. It's not roofing houses or mining coal or anything -- there are harder ways to make a living, of course. But it is damn discouraging - especially when you're on that initial climb and all you can see is the blinding flurry of rejection letters whipping around in the bitter wind.

A reasonably kind agent once said to me (in her rejection letter): "Don't give up. A good book will always find a home." So here's a plea. Focus on the writing. Tell the story. Hang out with your characters. And perhaps most crucial of all - never, ever climb without a buddy.

And don't forget your oxygen bottle. The ones left on the mountain are all empty.