My husband has a saying: “common sense is surprisingly uncommon”. Applying that here: stating the obvious is surprisingly unobvious! Us humans: we are remarkably capable of cherry picking “data” (if you can even call it that) to make a case we want to make. What I appreciate about your post here is that you just strip the pretense and literally say “here is the whole elephant in the room. Don’t pick on the trunk as say it’s a snake, or the legs and say it’s a tree, or the tail and say it’s a rope. Nope. See the WHOLE thing. And name it.”
Enlightening read! I’m a lot more interested in hearing from small presses than the big 5 tbh. Thanks for sharing.
Re: on not receiving more submissions… I checked out the Submissions page for Belt and it only mentions novels in “which place is place as a main character”—I wonder if that’s a factor?
What kind of novels are you interested in? I just finished serializing one on Substack. I am not planning on looking for a publisher because I read time and again that serialized novels on Substack will most certainly not be accepted by an agent and/or publisher.
I’ve been teetering on attempting serialization— thank you for this!!!
I love the idea of a novel containing traces of its own production. And how interesting that the book was first serialized on Substack. Great post!
My husband has a saying: “common sense is surprisingly uncommon”. Applying that here: stating the obvious is surprisingly unobvious! Us humans: we are remarkably capable of cherry picking “data” (if you can even call it that) to make a case we want to make. What I appreciate about your post here is that you just strip the pretense and literally say “here is the whole elephant in the room. Don’t pick on the trunk as say it’s a snake, or the legs and say it’s a tree, or the tail and say it’s a rope. Nope. See the WHOLE thing. And name it.”
Obvious? Maybe. But apparently also not.
Enlightening read! I’m a lot more interested in hearing from small presses than the big 5 tbh. Thanks for sharing.
Re: on not receiving more submissions… I checked out the Submissions page for Belt and it only mentions novels in “which place is place as a main character”—I wonder if that’s a factor?
What kind of novels are you interested in? I just finished serializing one on Substack. I am not planning on looking for a publisher because I read time and again that serialized novels on Substack will most certainly not be accepted by an agent and/or publisher.
Very well said.
Loved this post. As usual, no-nonsense and eminently readable.
Appreciate that Christine!