Rejection is an inevitable part of everyone’s publishing journey at every stage. And with rejections come “dead manuscripts”. Well, I’ve just decided to start giving my dead manuscripts some life (and some love) by painting pictures for them. I started painting just under two months ago, as a way to reduce my stress from this ongoing war and the state of the world, and needless to say, I’m still painting.
If you’re not querying or have never queried, you might ask what is a dead manuscript? If you are or have, you know. Dead manuscripts are manuscripts that never found a home or never found an ending or never found a plot or never found a voice. While Stephen King advises writers to “kill their darlings”, he’s been at this a lot longer than me and is wildly successful. I can’t quite afford to kill them so I instead lock them away (kind of like in Misery). I cut sections from manuscripts or say goodbye to whole manuscripts all the time. I don’t kill them or murder them or obliterate them, I file them. I might need that plot one day or that character description or that award winning first line.
Even when they are filed away, I dream about them from time to time. And the ones that I loved the most, I’ve decided to paint. Will they ever be read to anyone besides my cat? Perhaps not, but she agrees they’re too precious to go. And while they might not ever have a cover or contract, I will now be able to revisit them, my turtles and tortoises, ants and gladiators, pigs and astronauts, in full color, whenever I wish.
