Tag: author

Slow motion…

~ Meg

How slowly time moves when you are waiting…

In the last few months of concentrating on novel writing/editing/revising, I have also been trying to educate myself on the best way to attract the attention of an agent. In that regard, I have re-subscribed to Writer’s Digest (after having let it lapse) and taken advantage of a couple of the webinars they offered on the subject. Along with the price of the webinar, the participants were guaranteed answers to all of their submitted questions and feedback on the first five pages of our manuscripts from the agents moderating the session. I have submitted the first fives pages of Three Empty Frames to both the agents and now I’m awaiting their response. I also asked the question I had about my self published novels being off the table for submission because of their being previously published. So now I wait… It could be a month or more before I hear back.

Another venue I’ve taken advantage of is a Facebook Writers’ forum I had joined and largely ignored over the last year. I posed my question about self publishing and got several less than encouraging responses. Most everyone agrees that self published books are unacceptable to agents for query. The self published authors that have moved to the traditional publishing world have done so mostly after being discovered BECAUSE their self published work was already successful.

Another ‘lovely’ discovery I had thrown in my face is this: just because you get an agent doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for self promotion. To summarize: authors are expected to do their own marketing whether or not they have an agent. So the days of writers just working on their next book while their marketing team does all their publicity are gone. (Of course everything changes when you are a best seller, but until then…) My desire is to write, to direct my energy and creativity into crafting stories. To be a success at it seems to mean diverting some of that energy into crafting a marketing strategy. I’m trying to work out how I feel about that.

And speaking of feelings… Honestly, I have been all over the place mentally/emotionally with all the uncertainty of publishing/self publishing. Some days I am optimistic and determined and other days I am ready to throw in the towel. If one learns the best by learning from making mistakes then I should be the valedictorian of my class.

 

Limited Visibility

~ Meg

I’ve nearly completed the revision of Three Empty Frames, Book One in the Bucks County Novels. However, I may not be able to query an agent with that book. I am researching this question at the moment, but the very fact that it has been self published will most likely prevent it from being considered by an agent. I’m trying to find out if pulling the book from Amazon will negate that status.

With that in mind, I have to make some decisions. Do I revise and edit the fifth novel: Breaking Bread (still needs a new title) and query with that manuscript? Would I need to make it a stand alone story or will its status as a series book be beneficial? In other words, if the agent likes this story, will they be more likely to take a look at the previous books in the series despite their being self published? Or will an agent see ‘series’ and run screaming?

I could also resign myself to viewing these series stories as good ‘practice’ for a novice writer and just leave them as they are on Amazon. My next move would be to complete the World War One novel and query with that. After all, I have always called that the book of my heart.

I’m sort of just thinking out loud, here. Thanks for listening.

 

Emptying your veins onto the page.

~ Meg ~ 79 Comments

Writing is therapy.

How much of yourself do you pour into your writing?  The answer may vary dramatically depending on the type of writing you do.  No one bares their soul in a technical manual.  But fiction writers, poets, lyricists… all inject their own joy and pain, fear and desire into their work.  The question is: what do we risk in exposing ourselves to the world?  How much do we give?  Sharing the very essence of yourself is either crazy or incredibly brave.

Part of it is about trust.  Do you trust yourself to convey those thoughts and feelings accurately?  Do you trust your readers to understand, to relate?  Because that’s kind of the point.  We are sharing.  We want it to reach someone, to entertain at a minimum, or to move the heart, stir the spirit.  This very notion gives your writing weight.  It’s a heady thing– moving a soul.  Choose carefully, the words you’re about to commit to paper.  Craft them with skill, arrange them just so.  Speak them aloud to see how they roll off the tongue.

Another part of it is honesty.  Do you share the difficult stuff, too?  The things that might make your readers cringe?  Exposing your fears, flaws, failures, and mistakes opens you up to criticism, rebuke and rejection.  And yet that cleansing, that catharsis may be just the thing you need to put out there.  Risk or not.

Consider your audience.  Who is reading your work?  Maybe you’re anonymous here on your blog.  That certainly gives you a lot of freedom to post at will.  For those of us blogging with full disclosure?  Not so much!  So what do you do if there’s something just eating away at you?

Some stories just beg to be told.  I’ve had an interesting life full of adventures and catastrophes, joys and pain.  The painful parts are the hardest to tell but they are also the stories that burn inside.  That doesn’t mean I have to write a memoir.  But I can tell a story.  Wrap a memory in the cloak of fiction and pen the narrative as if it happened to somebody else.  All the desperate hopes, crushed dreams and lost loves pour onto the page.

If you look hard enough, my writing empties my veins.  More of it flows out every day.  If you are able to separate the drops of fact from the volume of fiction, you will see the essence of me.  Go ahead and look.  I’ll leave you to decide which is which!

What do you say, writers?  Do you pour yourself out onto the page?