It’s funny how sometimes the simplest things can’t just occur to us, they have to hit like an epiphany. For the last two years (damn, it’s been that long) I’ve been trying off and on to find an agent for my book. The trouble is, my book is YA-but-not-really, written for the late teen/ early twenties female demographic (by a girl who WAS in her late teens and is now… getting old fast…) It contains a lot of profanity, a lot of sex, some violence… no more than you’d find in the movies 16-22 year-olds are watching, or the songs they’re listening to, or the lives many of them are living… but more than seems to be allowed in novels.
For so long I was so determined not to let this apparent lack of marketability discourage me, but the other day I realized, let’s say I DO manage to find an agent… is it gonna take my agent two years to find a publisher? Will any publisher take a chance on such a book, and if they do, will they promote it successfully?
I’ve always thought of self-publishing as the fallback plan for authors that weren’t “good enoughh“ to get published the regular way. But why must doing something yourself be a source of shame? I’ve always been proud of doing it my way, from cutting my own hair at thirteen to paying my own rent at eighteen. I’ve seen many of my favorite rappers become successful through mix-tapes they released themselves… could I do something similar?
I believe dreams are our subconscious minds’ way of telling us something we are too stubborn to realize while awake (and if they predict the future, which sometimes they do, it’s because our subconscious minds may already know the future… I know, I’m weird, I’ve been going through some things lately, reading a lot about quantum physics, Santeria, etc…) Well, the other night I “woke up” and saw police lights right in front of my window… but as I sat up, I realized it was not my bedroom window I was looking through, it was the windshield of a car. Somehow, I’d driven a car (which broke down in the summer of 2010) to the McDonald’s across the street and fallen asleep in the drivethru. I realized I had to get out of there before the cops stopped arresting whoever they were arresting and came for my ass next. Then I realized I had to be dreaming. But I couldn’t wake up. I smacked myself in the face but still I remained trapped in my dream world. I decided that since I couldn’t escape to the safety (yeah right) of waking life, I might as well see where my journey led. So I started driving.
When I woke up for real (stupid alarm clock) I interpreted my dream to mean that I had to embark on a mission which began at my inner-fat-girl’s favorite restaurant. I know, that sounds funny, but it just so happens that the McDonald’s across the street is where I go when I need to use the internet. So now I’m sitting here, sucking the melted ice from my sweet tea, creating a blog to chronicle my self-publishing adventure.
It’s worth noting that I have no idea how I will self-publish, since I can barely afford things like electricity and McChicken sandwiches. But this isn’t the first time I’ve made a way for myself when it seemed there was no way to be found. Plus, I’m here, I’m alive, and until that alarm clock rings on my ass, I might as well try, right?
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