Tough skin — pep talk from Ash Huang
Howdy!
Long time no newsletter. First: thanks for being here. I'm so glad to have some company as I navigate all the ups and downs of all my creative pursuits, even if it's pixellated and ethereal. I appreciate you!
In today's edition:
- News
- Pep talk: Tough skin
- End matter
News
In biggest news, I’m now agented! I signed with Hana El Niwairi of CookeMcDermid in July, and we are working together to get my manuscript submission ready. I sometimes remember when I'm sitting around and do a little shimmy. It is absolutely unreal.
Hana helped me finally crack open an issue that’s been plaguing me literal for years. Shoutout to my beloved crit partners who helped me see the problems, but then I swirled for a long time trying to figure out how to fix things.
I’m feeling very good about revisions. From there, it’s into the secret box of submissions and getting in front of editors. Just like querying, maybe I’ll emerge victorious, maybe I won’t. There’s just no predicting what will happen.
Here’s a moodboard I made for a pitch. Just stir in old Copenhagen academia vibes with old Taipei and you have the Steppe and the Metamorphium.
I'm really proud of this book, and hope I'll get to share it with the world! I don’t know what’s interesting about the publishing process versus insider baseball, so that will suffice for my book update. Do you want to know more? In all honesty, I’m out of shape with sharing! So all of this feels extra vulnerable and weird! Cool!
You can read my flash, "Old Tune", which is part of the Periplus Fellowship's first anthology, Call and Response. We partnered up and wrote calls and responses, and I had the pleasure of responding to Jesús Rodríguez's piece, "The Getaway Car." It's a really cool project with so many good words, so please check it out!
Lastly, I redesigned my website. Again lol. Take a peep and do not worry—it has dark mode for vampiric times of day.
I’m keeping a mix of other story and workshop acceptances under wraps as I wait for contracts etc. !!!!! Some of those will be public next newsletter.
I think I said this last year, and I’ll probably say it next year—but just that ol' evergreen reminder that writing acceptances usually come with lots of rejections. For perspective, I’ve been rejected 95 times this year so far.
In that spirit, this newsletter’s pep talk is all about tough skin. Whee! Here we gooooooo
Tough Skin
The quote I've been thinking about all year is this one about writerly rejection from the NYT:
He had once been at dinner with Philip Roth. “Is it ever easier?” he asked Roth. “My skin will get thicker with each book, right?” ... “It’ll get thinner and thinner until they can hold you up to the light and see through,” Roth said.
The whole piece is worth a read, but this idea that you don't actually become some bulletproof barbarian with 3000hp via rejection is hard to swallow. When you are new, there is so much to do: improve craft, find your voice, absorb absorb absorb. Form rejections are frustrating, but at least you're doing The Thing.
Writing doesn't have that clean ascent story like other creative pursuits. Your work doesn't become more Instagrammable like a painter's, and you can't sell a couple planters like a ceramicist. Once you start getting good, you start getting a different sort of rejections: rejections of your actual voice.
While your newbie rejections are, 'this wasn't up to snuff', advanced rejections are, 'this was up to snuff craft-wise. We just didn't vibe with what you had to say, or how you chose to say it. Someone else might feel differently.' —That last part if they're particularly reassuring. Of course, this becomes particularly fraught for marginalized folks, who despite having a reading audience, may not find a friendly editor without some very long searching.
It doesn't matter if you're already tough. The closer and closer you get to acceptances, the more painful things become. The personal rejections become TRULY personal, in a way that breaks your heart and can make you question if you belong here at all.
I don't think tough skin is actually worth much in this business. Optimism and love are better. Because as you collect these demoralizing personal rejections, you get better at writing. You tell the truth to yourself. You start to crave processing all your stuff on the page. When things are not right, you understand how to fix them—or how to get the second looks you need to diagnose the problems properly.
I know it's tongue in cheek advice, which grizzled writers like to give: if you can quit writing, quit. If you are in this for how it feels to have written, not the writing itself, you're better off getting a fancy day job. But among the highest highs is when you really write your heart out and you know what you've put down is true and legible to the people you write for.
And for yourself.
Acceptance does not come after some specific slog. It sometimes doesn't come at all, as there's no justice in publication. Great work remains unpublished all the time, and I don't see that changing any time soon.
When acceptance does come for me, it always feels surprising, as if someone has blasted me in the face with a neon water cannon while I'm hurrying out my front door.
I am only happy writing when I write with great love for the process itself, and have hope that I have said something real. I wish for the same for you, whatever you are up to, wherever you are on your own journey.
End matter
It’s been a busy year with the querying process, design work, game writing, family, and still trying to find moments to write. I have managed to post a few notes on the blog:
- On 'madness' and genius: how being excruciatingly boring has become my highest ideal
- Somewhere more solar: where my writing is taking me
- Podcasts! What I listen to, as of March '23
And something new: do !!you!! need a creative pep talk? Hit reply and let me know. I’m usually only Spiderman meme jabbing encouragement to myself in the mirror. Shrugs? Let's try it? Rest assured you would remain anonymous.
And finally: If you feel like tossing me a few bucks while feeding your own reading habit, I have a bookshop.org storefront with some of my favorite reads. It's a work in progress, but I earn a teensy commission if you snag one (or a few!). Help me upgrade my TBR from merely towering…to menacing and nearly sentient! You’ll be supporting indie bookstores while you’re at it.
Until next time,
Ash