Get it Out There

So, say you’ve been writing for years. You’ve pretty much mastered the niceties of punctuation, you know your grammar and can parse a sentence with the best of them. Your vocabulary would blow away the SAT people, and you read, read, read just like all the writing books recommend.

Yet, you still can’t get people to read your work.

Queries get returned with “not interested, go away” stamped on their envelopes. Articles come back with “Are you kidding?” Your book has been out on submission for so long, you think it’s run away and is sitting in some dive somewhere, stale beer soaking its pages, lost and adrift.

When you read your work, however, you see nothing wrong. You chuckle at the jokes. You nod in admiration at a well-turned phrase. You’ve hammered away at the prose until it’s lean and fit and ready to make its way in the world.

Yet, here it sits, figuratively slumped in front of the TV, wasting its prime on reality shows and eating potato chips.

So, what’s the problem?

Is it that your writing isn’t as good as you thought?

Or is it that you’ve been lazy and haven’t been encouraging it to get off the couch and go out the door?

Yeah, my guess is it’s the second option. If you’ve worked hard at your writing and it’s as good as you can make it … WHY would you let it sit around instead of going out to conquer the world?