laramie

matociquala just wrote, over on her journal,

The first finished book was All the Windwracked Stars. And as skzbrust said to me then, when you finish a draft, it doesn't matter if it sucks. You have done something that 99% of the people who set out to write a novel will never do.

What matters is not if it's good; what matters is that it's done. Because chances are, the first one won't be any good.

But if you finish one, you can finish two. And the second one is likely to suck less than the first. (There you go; more received wisdom. Two for the prica.)

This is actually pretty encouraging to me. I've completed drafts of three novels. The third didn't suck enough to deter an agent from taking it on, even though it wasn't quite non-sucky enough to engage a publisher.

I failed to see getting that far (and getting personal feedback from a handful of editors) as encouragement. I took the rejections too much to heart (to my own annoyance), and haven't completed any novels since then, though I have a number in mind. I have completed several shorter pieces, including children's stories.

It's nice to think that, as little as I've accomplished as a writer (only three published short stories and three trunked novels,) it's "something 99% of the people who set out to write a novel will never do."