Driving Myself Crazy

I think I overloaded a bit on the post-conference reports. In my curiosity to know exactly what goes on at these things - and why folks spend the money - I may have mistakenly taken in too much advice.

So: You're supposed to write what you want, but you're supposed to write to the market. Everyone is looking for fresh voices, yet everyone's looking for erotica. Chick lit is not, in fact, dead, only renamed. Historicals are not dead, yet Harlequin Historicals may in fact be dead. Harlequin is canning the Bombshell line, except when it isn't. Everyone is looking for books to sell to a Wal-mart audience, yet everyone is looking for erotica, which Wal-mart doesn't sell. You need to write really well to get published, and you need to network to get published. Query letters don't matter, because you can't get an agent if you don't know someone. You should write really well, unless you're not writing erotica, in which case just fold up your MS and put it away.

I think I would have gone nuts if I went to that thing. It was bad enough reading the fallout on the net.

In the meantime my mother had some problems with the pages I sent her so I have to look at them yet again. In order to finish my (possibly dead) historical, try to get a (possibly impossible) agent, and sell to a publisher (who is really looking for erotica.)

Have I warned the kids lately not to be a writer?

And yet, I can't quit. Why not? What the hell drives writers, me included, to keep going? I can't think about doing anything else.

I really should take up needlework.

I hear the needlework people are nice.