As some of you may know, I have a completed manuscript Arisugawa Park. I connected with a respected agent about a year ago and we started shopping an extensively revised manuscript about 5 months ago. The rejections were polite, but firm, despite the fact that my agent (and her intern) thought the prose unique and original. One editor's publisher had had poor luck with a Japanese thriller a couple years ago and suspected that they would be gun shy to market another. Another called it an "easy pass," noting that my prose was mechanical, though the concept was ambitious. My agent planted in my ear that the real reason for many rejections was its length.
Rather than reassess the manuscript, I decided to embark upon a new project, as a way of halting a constant stream of doubts. I needed to go direct and improv, demonstrate to myself that I was still able to produce. I'm now on my second month of the serial novel Cowachunga, which I write and publish as I go each week.
I get 500 hits and 75-100 unique visitors each time I publish a section of Cowachunga (and this is relying strictly on organic social media + word of mouth). Should I be aiming higher? Does anyone have a similar project in mind? I think in a way I am traversing a path pioneered by The Martian, but I don't have a community of scientific peers to activate in debate on how long a cubic liter of oxygen will last at an inverse decompression rate.
#endurancewriter
Rather than reassess the manuscript, I decided to embark upon a new project, as a way of halting a constant stream of doubts. I needed to go direct and improv, demonstrate to myself that I was still able to produce. I'm now on my second month of the serial novel Cowachunga, which I write and publish as I go each week.
I get 500 hits and 75-100 unique visitors each time I publish a section of Cowachunga (and this is relying strictly on organic social media + word of mouth). Should I be aiming higher? Does anyone have a similar project in mind? I think in a way I am traversing a path pioneered by The Martian, but I don't have a community of scientific peers to activate in debate on how long a cubic liter of oxygen will last at an inverse decompression rate.
#endurancewriter
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