The last month, I’ve been having a blast chatting with a lovely lady on Twitter, Lindsay Newton, (visit her website too!) about our adventures in writing. We met through #Pitmad in December and have kept up sharing our ups and downs with submitting our work to agents and publishers. Today, I was in need of a blog post idea and Lindsay, I think unintentionally, gave me the inspiration for this beast of a post, through a Twitter DM, after asking me a simple question…
[Have you] been down this book road before?
This was my answer (revised and expanded after further reflection.) I hope you find it helpful. 🙂
From Stars, Come Dragons was my first submission of any kind.
I got to the point, after the beta reading phase and MANY more revisions, where I couldn’t work on it anymore without hiring an editor. Since I couldn’t afford to do that, I said, screw it, and started submitting.
The rejections trickled in over the first round of submissions. Then the second. Then the third. And when I couldn’t take anymore, I stopped submitting and tried reworking the plot, the POV, the tense, everything. However, I never finished a rewrite, because as I tried “fixing” it, I kept setting it aside for other WIPs (For a reference point to just how distracted I was, I wrote 3 first drafts and 2 partial first drafts, of different ideas, over the last year.)
Anyway, I was convinced FSCD was broken or bad, because of all the rejections. So, I shelved it for a few months while I finished, revised, and had another WIP beta read. And during that process, one of the beta readers broke me. They gave me the worst feedback ever. Rather than telling me what they thought of my MS, they told me how they would “fix” it. I haven’t touched that manuscript since. BUT… After working on other things and stewing over their feedback for awhile, the subjective nature of the industry hit me. Not long after that, #Pitmad came up and I said, screw it. I’m going for it!
I threw out the rewrite attempts and submitted the original final draft of FSCD and got a like (thanks Tiffany!)
The cliche advice is true. Keep writing, don’t give up, and have confidence in your work and others will, too.
And don’t overlook opportunity just because it doesn’t come with a sign on bonus or a contract with one of the big 5 publishers. I’m extremely grateful for the chance FaB took on me. I’m getting the full publishing experience, editing and all, without having to pay a dime (it still stands that you should do your research. Make sure you know the difference between a small publisher and a vanity press. The money should always flow to the author, not away. If a “publisher” demands payment, RUN AWAY.)
I set several goals for myself when I started taking writing seriously just over two years ago. Publish something, was on that list. I wanted that tangible object to show for all the hard work I was doing. Of course, I could have self-published, but it didn’t interest me, at all. And so I had settled in for the long haul, because Brandon Sanderson, a huge inspiration to me, said it would be about 10 years before I learned enough and honed my craft to the point it was industry ready. And that was on average!
I still have a lot to learn, and room for improvement, but I’m so grateful for Tiffany and Jen at FaB for saying yes to me. Having my novel published is a dream come true. And I can’t wait for the day I hold my book in my hands, crack the spine, and smell the fruits of our labor in the pages and ink.
AMS
