A bit of background: back in the 2010s, I was still chasing the typical publishing dream. You know what it looks like: participating in an online writing group, attending conferences, reading blogs, networking on social media, following agents, and listening to a lot of advice. Bad advice, as I now know.
But back then I didn’t know just how bad it was, or how it would affect my writing down the line. All I knew was that “real” writers were chosen by publishers, either through an agent or directly by the publisher itself. Indie publishing was for losers who weren’t good enough to be chosen. That was the conventional wisdom, and even now a lot of writers still believe that a publisher can sprinkle fairy dust on their work to “validate” it, whatever that means.
With that mindset, I naturally jumped at the chance to publish some novellas with a small e-press. I’d already sold short stories to confession magazines (remember those?) and written a few articles for a well-respected food magazine, so I figured this would be a good way to add to my writing credits for when I had a novel ready to submit to agents.
Well, the small e-press closed four years later. At least I got my rights back, but I was still trapped in the belief that if a publisher didn’t want my work, it had no value. The confession magazine publisher also went under, but I couldn’t get my rights back to those stories. Over the next few years, I continued to submit a few short stories to other magazines, but by that time I was so fed up with writing groups, writing culture, disrespectful publishing industry people, online drama, and bad writing advice that I decided to quit. 15+ years of that crap turned writing from a fun hobby into something I loathed.
And I deleted every copy of everything I’d ever written, including the novellas that were reverted back to me. Publishers only wanted novels, and if no one wanted to publish my novellas, that meant they were worthless.
Then I came across WMG Publishing’s classes. I knew of Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch back when I was still “chasing the dream,” but the conventional wisdom was they didn’t know what they were talking about. Well, turns out they DO know what they’re talking about, and even though not everything they teach works for me, they got me thinking and experimenting and convinced me that indie publishing was the way to go.
More importantly, they saved my writing. I learned how to play and have fun again. I wrote and indie published a few short stories and a novella and I had a blast!
They also convinced me that my old stories had value. The confession stories were a lost cause, but the novellas were mine.
Except I didn’t have them anymore because I’d deleted them. I scoured my computer and my thumb drives to try to recover them and I managed to recover a short story, but not the two novellas I wanted.
This is why the writing world is poisonous — it breaks people’s creative spirits.
Retrieving Book 1: an old acquaintance texts from out of the blue
Years later, I received a text from someone I used to work with. I hadn’t heard from her in over a decade. She said she came across Book 1 on her phone and wanted to see how I was doing. By that time, I’d given up on ever retrieving my books and had moved on, but when we met for coffee I was thrilled to learn she still had a copy of Book 1.
Unfortunately, it was in her Apple Books library and couldn’t be printed or converted into a form that my word processor could read. We finally figured out a way for her to share her Apple Books library with me so I could access Book 1. I took a screenshot of each page in the book and I’m now retyping the text into the computer so I can get it ready to self-publish.
Retrieving Book 2: a San Francisco librarian helps a metro Detroit writer
I knew finding Book 2 would be a long shot because I didn’t know anyone who still had a copy. I considered it gone for good, but a few days ago I Googled the title just to see what came up. To my surprise, a few libraries had a copy. Unfortunately, none of them were in Michigan.
I decided to call up the San Francisco Public Library, fully expecting them to blow me off since I live in metro Detroit. After I explained my problem, the reference librarian took down my information and a few days later issued me a library card! Yes, Michigan me has a California library card. And with that card, I can borrow Book 2 so I can retype it into my computer and republish it.
Except right now someone else has borrowed Book 2. I’m on the hold list waiting for my own book. 😆
Lesson: know your own value
If I’d valued my own work, I wouldn’t have had to go through all of that. The amount of bad advice out there is staggering, nearly all of it some variation of “you’re doing it wrong” and tearing other writers down. It’s easy to lose the joy of creating stories in that environment.
Don’t let anyone, not even so-called experts, steal your joy. Be brave enough to experiment and discard any advice that doesn’t work for you. Believe that what you create has value. And most of all, make sure your creative dreams are truly yours, not dreams others say you should have.
Grace Wen 