Agree with you Jenn, I couldn't submit on principle. But then again, that might be why I'm still unpublished.

Novelists aren't created, but of course the ability can be nurtured. True talent is something you are born with, irrelavant of class or wealth.

This thread just leaves me feeling quite sad somehow.

As Hemingway said, "It's not of their business that you had to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way."

Brilliant quote. I love it. Thanks Emma for sharing

Thanks, Sharley. I find Hemingway intensely irritating (and not only because though he's a great writer he has such a disastrous influence on so many aspiring writers) but it is a great quote.

Although it would have helped if I'd typed it correctly as "none of their business".

Don't worry about your typing. When referring to your quote, I called him Hemmingway on Twitter - although that also means I misquoted him.

I was once a true optimist, a whole-hearted idealist. Any hope and optimism I once had about myself, my prospects, my ambitions and my endeavours has long since been eradicated; but however foolish, hopeless, idiotic it may be, I still have a soul, that greatest of character flaws that a businessman can possibly possess. The only real chance I have of raking in the clients and turning New Dawn into a financial success is by giving up on publishing books, and turning it into a literary agency- but the day we do, we will have lost any pretensions of our moral standpoint, and succumbed to our fate as nothing more than another soulless, bloodsucking parasite. You're right, any student with a creative writing degree would want to aim higher. I did. Deep down, I still do. But I speak from many experiences when I say that, in this age of disillusionment, there comes a time when you have to stop staring up into the clouds, waiting around for someone to toss a rope down so you can climb up. However much you may deserve it. There comes a time when you have to take the few chances you can get, scaling whatever mountains, hills or cliffs you can, or you'll never get anywhere in life.

I kind of understand the sentiment behind this. But it feels like it makes too big a swing from one extreme - true optimism/whole-hearted idealism - to another - becoming a soulless, bloodsucking parasite. Of course, these extremes exist but in the majority of writers, editors, publishers and agents, there is an internal struggle to find a balance nearer the middle. And, for the writer who is driven by art more than by money, say, there is surely a third way. It starts by recognising that publishing is a business, but not allowing that fact to have one's optimism determined by the naive notion that publishing would be anything else. This alone should prevent you from allowing your ambitions to be 'eradicated' by what is actually just the reality of commerce.

The third way for me at the moment focuses on short fiction. I've sold over 20 stories to pro and semi-pro mags. But those successes came against hundreds of rejections. I'm not bitter about that; I haven't had my ambitions destroyed. Through researching the situation, I knew that's the way it would be. Which means I have to do three things: stay true to my visions/themes, improve my writing and keep being persistent with submissions. And of course, there will always be a struggle between staying true to vision and selling one's work.

It also means accepting rejection while at the same time knowing magazine editors aren't always right. It doesn't mean that I shouldn't trust my ability and allow myself to know that a story that's been rejected 30 times is actually still a good story. The third way, I think, is to accept the situation you're in on the one hand, while persisting on the other; acknowledging the contradictions and getting on with the job. And/or taking the self-publishing route - but if so, to do it with the same degree of professionalism, realism and improving art.

Terry