Aaaaand I’m still having trouble with the construction of Heavy Ice. Honestly, considering the heavy weather I’ve made of it so far, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I came from some kind of universe where novels had stalled out after Tristram Shandy and everyone took to reading epic poems instead, and now here I was reinventing this strange thing called the novel and trying to decide what kind of beast it was and whether it had flippers or feet.
However, it is progressing. Which is good.
I’ve also decided to put a moratorium on reading posts or tweets from people talking about how much they dislike self-published books, or what they think of the attitudes of ‘unpublished’ authors or the horrors of ‘slush’ or whatever, because it just wastes my time and is generally unhelpful.
The thing is, I’m not going to stop writing just because some people think I shouldn’t be doing it. There isn’t a lot that will stop me writing. Major mental health issues will do it, and so, rather more temporarily, will people who annoy me saying ‘keep writing’ in a patronising tone of voice. But in the broad view of things, this is what I do. I write like I breathe. (Okay, I am getting over a cold at present. Maybe that is not the best analogy)
I’m going to keep on trying to make my writing better. I don’t rule out the possibility of submitting writing to agents again in the future: it depends on how things go. But if someone who’s never met me (or someone who I know and like, which is harder to deal with, I admit) suddenly gets a bee in their bonnet about what kind of writing they consider valid, that is not my problem.
Excuse me now. I have a planet to invade. 🙂
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Ankaret Wells 
I am very glad you aren’t going to stop writing because stupid people think you should, because I enjoy your writing very much.
Thank you.
The thing is, it gets to a point where either I can carry on querying increasingly more unlikely people with a book that no one shows any inclination to buy, or I can listen to all the smug voices out there saying ‘the reason people aren’t published is that they’re unpublishable’ and politely put the manuscript in the hard-drive equivalent of a suitcase under the bed and try to write something more commercially viable, or I can say ‘sod it’ and make the book available myself on Lulu, and get on with writing something else.
And the third option is the one that makes me feel happiest and sanest, so that’s what I’m doing.
And I agree it is the right move too – I enjoyed Requite a whole lot more than a bunch of professionally published stuff and I’ve read some complete drivel that someone saw fit to publish so I’m quite convinced there is a whole bunch of luck and being in the right trend at the right time that pretty much outweighs writing talent as far as getting published is concerned.