Patience

A couple of years ago I sat down the romance novel I was reading. "I could write one of these," I said.

I had no idea what I was in for.

Naive is too mild to describe the state of my ignorance. I'm mildly dyslexic - hence I'm hopeless at proof reading. My spelling has always been iffy. Grammar was never an interest of mine. Oh yeah, I'm a mediocre typist - on a good day. None of these obvious disqualifications dissuaded me.

If I'd known about the patience requirement I might never have ventured into writing romantic fiction. The first two years I had a good time writing books that don't fit into any marketing niche, nor do they deserve to. Still in my blissful state of ignorance, I frowned at the speedy rejections. Speedy being a relative term. From initial submission to form rejection taking about three months. I took further steps to learn my craft, primarily begging, borrowing and buying critiques.

What was I doing wrong? Just about everything. No one even said nice formatting. In fairness the formatting was probably wrong too. It hurt, these were stories I loved, but I listened. I wrote new stories and I got nice comments. It now takes much longer to get rejected.

Is that progress?

Darned if I know. I'm still waiting to hear on my last submission of a requested partial. Five months and counting.