Answering the Call
Big-Ass Revision Series, Part 1
“What am I avoiding?”
A couple months ago, I faced this question. My answer: “My fairy tale novel.”
All my life I’ve loved fairy tales. So I wrote one, thirty years ago. I’ve brought it out and dusted it off about once every five years; I’ve given it a good overhaul about once a decade.
Once upon a time I had a literary agent who promised to sell it to a publisher. When that didn’t happen, I got another literary agent who promised to sell it to a publisher. When that didn’t happen, I decided to get it published myself. When that didn’t happen, I wrote other things—and many of them were published, and as you know, I created a life of good work around writing.
Yet there was avoidance, too. And disappointment and heartache and sadness about my fairy tale novel. I also developed a strong vein of envy toward other fairy tale-writers!
