I’ve been having trouble writing.
It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. I wouldn’t call it writer’s block so much as an anxiety towards my own writing, which just sounds silly. There’s a piece I’ve been working on for some time now that seems like it will never be perfect. It’s a story I care about a lot and it’s one that I want to write. It’s important, and I worry I’ll never be able to do it justice.
So I took a step back from it, not entirely by choice. Working full-time now it can be difficult to find the time to write. I usually write before work but for a variety of reasons I haven’t been sleeping as well as I should, I’m either lured awake by the blue glow of my phone or else I’m trying to fit in some reading I didn’t get a chance to during the day1. Then I’ll wake up tired, the words muggy and slow in my brain and not worth writing down, so I don’t. Then there was an unexpected funeral visitation I rushed to last month, and a few early mornings where everyone in my house had to leave at once meaning a frenzy of activity as we started our days. And I’m sure all of this sounds like an excuse but some of it has been legitimate. But if I were to be honest I think the biggest thing that’s been holding me back is fear and frustration.
I’ve worked on this manuscript for many years now and it never seems any closer to being done. I’m writing and rewriting, realizing I’ve done something well in this iteration but forgotten something important somewhere else. I’m not a planner when it comes to writing, I don’t have it all figured out. I hate outlining. I have an idea of what I want to write and then I sit and write because when I’ve tried to plan I find the words create their own map separate, and usually better, than anything I could have planned ahead. I write small notes to myself sometimes, especially now that I have the bones of this story. Details of what I’d like to add, characters and points I don’t want to forget.
Still though, sometimes this story seems impossible.
Also, I’ve been getting a lot of rejections.
Not from this manuscript. You can’t pitch something incomplete, even a novice writer knows that, and it’s not like I’m sending off my queries and counting the days for when I’ll be contacted back. Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve always been pretty good at submitting things and forgetting about it. I handle rejection well. I write something, I send it off, and maybe it will get published somewhere. Submit, ignore, and try again. And I know I’ve been lucky, that a few of those emails have resulted in the publication of some stories. But it’s been less lucky, it seems, for a book.
I went to a writing festival last month and spoke to a friend who has published a book. I briefly told her about my own frustrations, about how I was querying and the rejections I was receiving. She told me to keep trying, that she understood how hard it was. She told me that she had queried thirteen agents before getting picked up by one.
In 2024, I queried forty agents and independent publishers. Two independent publishers requested a full manuscript after receiving my query. I received twenty-six rejections. Thirteen agents/publishers never contacted me back.
So far in 2025, I have queried thirteen agents and independent publishers. One publisher requested a full manuscript. I have received five rejections, including one from the publisher who requested the full manuscript.
I’m still good at the forgetting part, but what gets hard is when there is a nibble, an interest, a request for a full manuscript. It’s one step closer to what I want and harder to forget. It’s a hope that gnaws at my brain, one I try hard to burrow because more often than not hoping for anything has only left me disappointed, though I can’t seem to stop hoping anyways.
The harder part is getting a reply back, of recognizing the publisher or agents name. That swell of hope that fills my heart even though I know before opening the email that it will be a rejection. And maybe that’s pessimistic, but I think being optimistic would be worse. After a lot of bad luck, I tend to live my life as expecting the worst and being surprised by the best when it does, periodically, come. I guess it’s negative, but it works.
The hardest part is the waiting. Even amongst the negativity, I know I will publish a book someday, even though right now it’s starting to feel improbable. Maybe this means I’m an egomaniac, maybe it means I’m delusional, but I feel the truth of it in my soul. I will be a published author, it’s just frustrating to have no idea when, to acknowledge that the only control I have over it is by writing and querying and the irony in the fact that the rejections have temporarily paralyzed me from doing either.
I keep my rejections. I have petty dreams of counting them all one day when everything works out, of looking at the reminder of when I felt useless and where I will be. I don’t look at them. Or not all of them. Just one, recently. It was nicely written, personalized. It gave me hope, the word acquisitions was used. It wasn’t a copy and paste “better luck next time,” and I understand why those are sent but I like when I can tell someone has taken the time to read my writing and is responding directly. I debated writing back, of sending them my thanks for their kindness, but that’s another big no when querying. Don’t reply to a rejection, it looks bad. Personally, it seems pathetic to thank someone for that. When I get a rejection I just file them away in a folder in my email and continue on. Submit, query, document the day I queried on and the day I heard back in my little black notebook and continue on.
But this is the thing that people don’t see. Like any artist, I share the successes, because who is going to share their failures? Who is going to let everyone know how often it hasn’t worked out?2 But then I remember something Hamilton-born actress Caissie Levy said at a concert of hers I once attended: hers is a career of no’s. While she was speaking from an actors point of view, I think that’s more or less the same way most artists careers go. Success is loud, failure is quiet.
I get stuck in my head sometimes. There was a non-fiction piece I read long ago in university by a writer who had stopped writing. So much of their identity had become being a writer and publishing a book that it was something they were always nagged about at any social event they attended so the writer lies about the book they are writing. They admit themselves to be a writer who doesn’t write, who’s never written the book they tell all the people around them is being created.
I worry about that a lot. I worry that that’s how I come across, or who I will become. My friends and many of my colleagues know that I write and I worry I seem like a fraud or some one trick pony, that I’ve had a few short stories published here and there but that I’m just playing the role of writer. That I’m never actually going to be an author.
I want to be an author. I can’t call myself an author until I’ve published a book. I don’t want to be a writer that never publishes a book. I want to have a book published.
I think about creating, I think about being an artist and what exactly that means. I think people confuse artistry and fame, and I think that explains the rise of AI. People want to be creative, they want to be artists but they don’t want to work on the skills to be an artist. In other words, they would rather be famous than be an artist. Sometimes when I see frustrated artists online I wish I could ask them, do you want to be famous or do you want to be an artist? Sometimes both things can happen but generally only one will. I want to ask them, would you still create if you never became famous?
Would I still write if I never published a book?
I’ve been having trouble writing. This Substack collects virtual dust3 when it’s whole purpose was to be a place for me to write about things that interest me. A popular question that writers get is who they are writing for and the answer is almost always for themselves. I write the stories I’d like to read, I write blog posts about what I am thinking or feeling, about things that interest me but even still I overthink, I’ll start writing a post and stop because I don’t think it’s interesting enough for readers. I blame social media, I blame the fact that so many of us are constantly on display looking for ways to entertain and entice the people who follow us.
I write words that I want to exist in the world. Fame has never really been an interest to me. I’m a stupidly simple person who finds joy in something as small as a colleague getting me a coffee as a surprise4. To see my someday book in a bookstore would be enough for me.
But would I still write if I never published a book? If that manuscript never gets picked up, if no one ever reads it, would I continue writing? If the only writing I had was this Substack and if no one even reads these words, would I still do it? Write into the void?
Yes, I think so, or I will. All I know is that I’ve felt lousy not writing and that writing this has already made me feel better, feel lighter. I like words. I like my words, even if I’m the only one who reads them5.
Or watching One Piece.
Me, apparently.
How are you liking the rebrand?
Something that really did happen once and I almost cried over.
Also, I really fucking hate querying, but I guess I’ll keep doing that too.