One of the reasons I disappeared under the radar recently was a deadline. Earlier this year, along with a bunch of other writers, I won a place in the Notes From The Underground anthology. The competition, run by the Literary Lab blog (often featured in our round up) required an initial submission. The winners then got ten pages in the anthology. Ten pages with which you can publish anything at all (presumably limited by various obscenity laws), without further judgement.
Of course I was delighted to win my place, and honoured to submit. However, I’ve noticed a reluctance in myself to publicize my entry in this real life, sold-on-Amazon, book. Why? Because I have no idea whether my work sucks.
Due to various commitments I had a narrow window to work on my piece, and I was rewriting right up until the deadline. That meant no beta readers, and no reflection time. I had to submit it with a mere 14 drafts, and no real clue whether it even made sense anymore.
Even if I had a coterie of readers signing me off, I’d still be ambivalent, I think. I would not have the confidence to shout about the story.
And that’s why I won’t self-publish. In order to have any faith that I’m writing at a level I can believe in I need the kind of validation that, in my gut, I feel only the gatekeepers can provide. Now I know there’s faulty logic here given that at least some utter trash makes it past these guardians of quality and on into print. By the same token we’ve all heard about fantastic books that were rejected a hundred times. So I can see, as accreditations go, representation and book deals (or story purchases) are flawed proofs of worth. On the other hand, though, it doesn’t seem that there’s anything else really out there yet.
Perhaps this will change over time, as other mechanisms arrive which separate vanity writing from the real thing. Or maybe I’ll simply become more confident in the quality of my work. As it stands, though, I’m stuck with old-fashioned submissions.
