by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Oh boy. I can’t change who I am. I can’t change what I’ve done — or not done — with my life over the years. I’ve always been a kook. I’ve always been a late bloomer.
So, there’s every reason to believe that if literary agents — many of whom will be liberal white women — can get past my age and dissipated life, that they may not be thrilled at what a kook I’ve been my entire life.
I’ve already had a problem with some snooty literary types not being willing to work with me because…I don’t honestly know. They’re snobs? They’re arrogant? But the key issue is I have to stop being so delusional. The moment I start to query my first two novels (if I can finish them both by July 22 like I hope) I have to leave delusion behind.
I have to start to deal with the cold hard facts of life.
I’m a middle aged man who can tell a good story. But that, alas, is all I got. I’m broke. I’m a smelly CIS white male. As one person told me recently, “the demographics aren’t on your side.” Ugh.
But I refuse to give up. I am going to keep going forward. I’ve decided to give myself five years from the moment I start querying before I will “give up” and self-publish.
By that point, if I’m not a published author — or close to being one — I will be about 56 and I might as well just self-publish to get it out of my system. And, yet, I’m not so sure I’ll actually do that. I have a huge fucking chip on my shoulder and I want the validation of getting past the gatekeepers so I can rub it in the face of people who have told me my writing sucks my entire life.
Fuck those people. I’m good enough, I’m smart enough and I *can* get published traditionally.
