Not Great But Unreal Expectations

It has been a busy week, finishing my NaNoWriMo work at around 65,000 words, getting ready for Thanksgiving, Black Friday shopping (I so detest this) and eventually Christmas. Going through my e-mail, I got a letter last night from a friend of mine who lives in the Seattle, Washington area.  Now, Russ, is a fairly good writer but hasn't taken it seriously until just recently.  I got him hooked on NaNoWriMo , mostly as a way for him to become disciplined as a writer.

This will be his second completed NaNoWriMo event.  So when I received an e-mail from him I was both elated that he had finished and with further reading I was appalled by he how he handled his rejection by an agent to represent him.  His e-mail went into detail about why he was miffed that the agent had turned him down.  The gist of it is a he had unrealistic expectations of his own work, a Percy Jackson/ Harry Potter hybrid.

Now, I have known him since 2005, he is a decent writer who gets a little wordy and tends to go into purple prose.  Sometimes I think he gets lost in his own details and fails to advance the story.  These are things I have talked to him about over the years, and his reply to that has always been, that since I am not a published author, I really can't speak to him about his work or its potential flaws.

All right, I’ll let that slide.  I admit I'm not a published author. I do work hard to perfect my craft.  I continue to send out short stories, my novel length stories and novellas, with all that I have been rejected somewhere between 150-160 times so far.  I'm realistic about my approach to my craft, I understand that the bottom line for the agent and ultimately the publishing house is simply can they sell what I write. Therefore, I work to improve my writing so that I increase my salability to my target market.

However, Russ is not realistic. Let's be honest, all writers have egos, we have to have egos to think that what we write and put on paper is worthy of other people reading.  I understand that, I'm good with that, I have an ego.  However, there is a difference between having a healthy ego, and unrealistic sky-high expectations that you are the next big thing.

The United States in 2011 published 292,037 (new titles and editions) books.  Not all of those were on the New York Times bestseller list, maybe 300 or 350 of those books made the list. That means there's roughly 290,000 books that you're competing against to be a bestseller. I told Russ that he needs to lower his expectations about his own work, that he can’t compare himself to other authors and their success.  

I don't think I got through to Russ, for some reason he felt that he was entitled to the success of those authors had. When I asked him why, he stated his story was similar but with a twist, the main character was born to the God Hades and trained since birth to destroy humanity, but in the end, he liked humans and used his dark powers to save them. I told Russ perhaps he should find an agent and let the market determine if his story is worthy of being on the best-sellers list, let the readers decided if he the writer he thinks he is.