David Dabling on Writing and Stuff

  Submitted my new children’s book to agents this morning. Salespeople are taught that each no is a step closer to yes. That may be true, but no matter how they love their product they really are not selling their own. It may only be five pages and 1393 words long, but it came from inside and was massaged for months. Far too often a writer does not get a no, they get ignored. Imagine finally coxing your beloved child up onto the stage for their little part only to have the audience not even acknowledge they are there. It is much easier to accept a tepid reception. It is very uncommon, but does happen that an agent replies only to be insulting. That of course is worse. Bad enough to have your child ignored without someone making the point of saying there are stupid and by the way you are ugly. It happens to us all that we have a dreadful day, then receive bad service and we snap at someone. That is wrong but human. But can you imagine going out of your way to be unkind? There is never

  When I was a child I had a bad case of David pay attention!  and a case of The class is in here not out the window. I made it through school alright for the most part because I would be interested in the concept even if not in the details. I could extrapolate enough to pass tests and the teachers did not always hound me to actually turn in the work. I was an adult before attention deficient disorder became a thing. Just before retirement age I was diagnosed with the condition. Happily I was able to find ways jobs that I could fake it enough to seem like I was paying attention to the job. Sometimes I found something in the job I could hyperfocus on thus being highly productive. Soldiering and teaching in elementary school worked pretty well for me since no two moments tended to be the same. The challenge of dealing with people, yes children count as people, and the focus changed all day long. I bring this all up as a fiction writer since I am avoiding working on something I do no