Forbidden Love

Today I’m going over an old manuscript. And not just any manuscript, the manuscript Liz with Aliens told me to not give up on or she’d hunt me down with a pointy stick until I got it published (I don't forget that sort of thing). I’ve written this story several times. Sweet Mother of Mountains, I have lived this story (well, not in the I-followed-the-fae-through-the-portal literally sense, but the laid awake at night hoping and dreaming about it).

This is a good representation of my Portal Feels.

The only problem: It’s a story with portals. Confession, when Glados said “Now you’re thinking in portals,” I laughed. Portals are my very favorite subtype of fantasy. Person from our world goes and has adventure in another world. I never stopped thinking in portals. As a kid, I dreamed and wished that I’d cross under a rainbow, or find a magic wardrobe (I didn’t even really know what those were because we didn’t have them in the US). The premise for most of the media I consumed as a child was “Young person finds way into magical world, has adventure, gains self esteem, and returns to this world a better stronger person.” Unicorns featured prominently.

Portals are my first love. So it’s no surprise that I have a portal story (an epic quadrilogy, to be exact).

It’s also no surprise that my story hasn’t really been the top of my “Polish this up and send it off to agents” list because I always try to keep market in mind.

It’s a portal story. At the end of the day, no agent is going to want to pick up a portal story because they are universally panned in the world of publishing. There are so many, after all. And what makes mine so special--that's actually a long story, but it starts with a jewish girl from a small town. Oh, wait, that's not what they mean. They mean how is it different from all the other portal stories. 

Did I mention the MC is Jewish? right, religious representation isn't enough because it's a freaking portal story. 

Sigh.

There are so many portal stories, that I’ve been sitting on this manuscript for almost two years. It’s just been rotting away on my hard drive. There’s a part of me that says that’s where it should stay, but the little girl inside me who dreamed about catching rainbows so she could go to where the unicorns live wants to pull this story out and take it for another ride.

So why do I feel so guilty working on a portal story?

What about you guys? How do you feel when you are in love with an unmarketable idea? Do you chase it down and watch it bloom, or have you mastered the cold places in your heart and put your zombie-unicorn-portal-dystopian into the morgue where all the publishing peeps says it belongs?