Writing to be published - 1.3/3
Are you publishing fit?
This is the final bit of the first part of a three-part series on writing to be published. Part One (all three bits of it) is all about YOU, the writer. It tries to nudge you to discover what sort of writer you are or could be, to unpick and discuss aspects of what your starting point is and what your desired destination might be. There are countless different sorts of writers and we’re not all in it for the same things. We will put different elements in, get different pleasures and pains, and achieve different measures of what we each might call success. You could dive in blind and thrash about or you could be more analytical, more knowledgable, more prepared. I know which I prefer. Mainly because that is not what I did, which goes some way to explain why I had 21 years of failing to be published before I achieved any success. And I’ve been learning ever since.
Today, I’m going to wrap up the discussion about YOU, the writer, with a look at what you know (or don’t) and whether you are fully prepared for something unpleasant but pretty inevitable: rejection.
If you haven’t already, do read the previous parts:
Writing to be published - 1.1/3: Beginning at the beginning - with you, the writer
Writing to be published - 1.2/3: What type of publishing is for you?
And now I will look at:
How much do you already know about the process of writing for publication? Where will you find more?
Have you been tested by rejection already? Are you ready for more? What will this do to your psyche?
How to be published, made simple
I said “simple”, but I didn’t say “easy”. The simple (but not easy) route is to write the right book in the right way and send it to the right publisher in the right way at the right time. This is something I’ve been saying (and writing) for many years and nothing I have learnt since, after over 100 books published, has made me change my mind.
The right book - a book a publisher thinks it can make sufficient money from. Some publishers only take books that they believe will make a lot of money; others have different desires; but they all need to believe they will make enough. And “enough” will mean something different in different circs. So you need to write a book that a publisher can feel confident and/or excited about. It needs to have a potential place on a bookshelf, even if it’s going to sell mostly online. It has to “fit” somewhere.
One way of writing a “right” book is to have a high concept or a “hook”. This is something that allows you to describe it very quickly and clearly, something that makes people sit up and say “Wow, that sounds really interesting and something I’d want to spend a load of hours reading”. Try to be very aware of your book’s hook and try to see it from the reader/listener’s viewpoint. Get inside their minds rather than banging on about how fascinated you are by some obscure aspect of history/science/politics.
In the right way - right for the genre; right for the potential reader. It has to follow some conventions, even if it’s not conventional. Again, it has to “fit” somewhere. There has to be a gap for it - but not a huge gap, otherwise it will disappear.
To the right publisher - see point one. You can find out whether it might be the right publisher by seeing what else they publish. If they don’t publish horror, that’s because they don’t want to publish horror so don’t waste your time by sending your horror novel to them. Do your research.
In the right way - this is the easy bit because publishers usually publish their submission guidelines. Follow them. There is a bit more to it and you have to understand a few things but all that information is available and simple once you know it. (I’ll give details of where to find it below.)
And at the right time - this is the really difficult bit because it’s a complete guess. You have no idea whether the publisher has just closed their list or has just commissioned something that is too similar to yours. You also have no idea what mood the publisher is in or what else is going on in their lives. They are human.
NB - all this also applies to submitting to agents.
How to find out more about the nitty gritty of submitting your work for publication
I used to write this blog - Help! I need a publisher! The advice is still very sound, even if the appearance is rather (very) tattered and old-fashioned. It’s also got a LOT of words in it, and articles in no particular order, so you’ll spend a lot of time wandering around there. Mind you, time spent preparing to submit your work is almost never wasted.
If you can find a copy of my book, Write to be Published, it’s a much simpler way of accessing the detailed info from that blog. But it’s no longer in print - long story but I chose to take the rights back - so you might not be able to find it. Btw it was not published in 1706, despite what Amazon says. I’m not quite that old. (NOTE: I will send a copy of the PDF of Write to be Published to everyone who takes out a paid annual sub to my Substack.)
I have two self-published ebooks you can buy for peanuts. (Not literally.) Dear Agent - write the letter that sells your book, which gives the details of how to write a perfect submission to either an agent or a publisher (or both, because that’s a thing) and Write a Great Synopsis, tackling that task which, weirdly, so many writers find impossibly difficult and unappealing.
Definitely get a copy of the Writers and Artists Yearbook and on their website look at the link to “advice”.
As soon as you can, apply to join the Society of Authors, as they will give you free contract advice and they run masses of online (and in-person) talks. But you need to have had something published first, which can include short stories, articles and self-published works. Check out their admission guidelines and, if in doubt, ask them.
If you’re writing for children, look at SCBWI.
Rejection - are you ready?
I wrote my first (unpublished) novel when I was 20 and had my first novel published when I was 41. During that time, I wanted and tried to be published all the time. (I did have a few things published but not what I wanted: a novel.) I was actively writing, submitting, being rejected, writing, submitting, being rejected. I realise now that I was writing the wrong book in the wrong way and sending it to the wrong publisher in the wrong way and at the wrong time. But in those days there were no helpful people on the internet giving me advice.
However, rejection is good (maybe not quite so much of it) because it makes you improve. Or it should. Thank goodness I was rejected in those early days! I would cringe to be able to read that stuff now and to know that others could, too.
We need to realise that writing is a deeply complex set of skills and we need time and practice to develop our voice, our tone, our creativity. Only then can we have a chance of becoming the writer we want to be and can be.
Unfortunately, most rejections aren’t directly helpful because they too often don’t tell you anything specific. And even when they do it’s not necessarily helpful because you might get one publisher saying it’s too long and another saying it’s too short. I’m not exaggerating. This happened to me. But gradually, you pick up repeated messages, or you get useful feedback from a reader (never your mother - feedback from your mother is never useful unless your mother is actually a publisher/agent/editor and works in the same genre you’re writing in) and things start to click into place.
You might pay for a consultation. I used to offer this service and charged quite a lot for it so I can’t exactly warn you off. But you do have to be very careful not to waste your money so make sure you get several recommendations. (I don’t offer this any more, before you ask. Only because it’s very, very difficult work when done properly. And you do not want it not done properly.)
How to deal with rejection
ALWAYS have another iron in the fire - send your work to three (or more) and when you’ve had two rejections send it out again. That way, your dampened hopes can be rekindled quickly.
After a few rejections, take a break and then read your work objectively again and see if you could/should revise it.
Remind yourself that if this writing isn’t good enough yet, you do not want it published. Make it good enough.
Join a writing group (if you like that idea) but make sure the group is well organised and able to give feedback kindly but firmly.
Keep reading - feed your creative mind.
Keep writing - because you are writing another book, aren’t you? You’re a writer, so write. At some point it is very likely that you will fall in love with your new work in progress and you will stop sending out the first one because you will realise that that was just your practice run. everyone has a practice run and it’s a very big moment in your writer development when you make that decision.
Keep trying to achieve your dream until you don’t want to any more, if that happens. If you keep improving, you will one day write that right book in the right way and send it to the right publisher in the right way and at the right time.
However, recognise that this “dream” is like one of those frustrating walks up a hill where, when you get to the top, you realise it isn’t the top and there are a whole load more peaks to be climbed.
Look after yourself mentally and find friends who will say the right things. A writer’s ego is almost necessarily a fragile one: we have to believe in ourselves and our very individual creativity and yet we never do quite believe in ourselves, or not for long. The whole thing about creativity is wanting to create something better and it’s never quite good enough. This state of being is fairly inevitable, I think.
Try really hard to accept any criticism as well-intentioned and probably as right as it can be, bearing in mind that it’s all subjective. You’ve got to somehow find the objectivity in the subjectivity and recognise them for what they each are. And there goes a very obscure remark! I’m basically saying: read any feedback carefully. Unpick it; work out what makes sense; don’t only believe what you want to believe. Anyone giving feedback has tried hard to say something helpful. But they could also be wrong - or they could be the only person to think that. This is an art more than a science.
Never retaliate, question or argue. You’re lucky to get any feedback at all: most rejections are along the lines of “not right for our list” or just silence. I once got my manuscript back with “NO!” scrawled across it in pencil. I was particularly upset that it was in pencil. I thought I warranted pen.
I look forward to welcoming you into the roller coaster ride that is the life of a published author! I love it and wouldn’t have any other life. The low moments are easily outweighed by the highs and the view from the mountain top is all the better for the tough climb to get there (even if there are more peaks ahead.)
In Part Two, I’ll be looking at your actual book and how you can make it the best it can be. We’ll look at genre, breaking rules, plotting (or not) and things like length and all manner of details. (Can you tell I haven’t planned what to say? I rarely do, even when writing a novel. And that’s something I’ll talk about, too.)
If you’re interested in Part Two and Three, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid subscription. They will be the first paid posts on my Substack. I will make them worth it, I promise.
NOTE: I will also send a free copy of the PDF of Write to be Published to everyone who takes out a paid annual sub.
