When I was in first grade, I had to stay late to finish taking a standardized writing test and I remember walking out of the building with my mom and my teacher, and the teacher turned to me and said, “do you think you’ll be a famous writer someday?” And I shook out my hands and said, “well, I really like writing, my it makes my hands hurt!” Thank God for computers. I still remember her name and her face when she asked me that, wide-eyed and expecting. When I told my father that I wanted to be an author, he laughed at me and said, “yeah, we’ll see about that.”
When I told my father I wanted to be a Latin Teacher, he looked at me sternly and said, “are you sure about that? You know teachers don’t make a lot of money.” Well, I was sure about it. I was also sure about becoming a published author, but I wasn’t going to say anything else about it to him until I had something to show for it.
Well, I published my first work in the middle school literary magazine. It was a Science Fiction short story about aliens trying to take over Earth and these five friends who stop it using super powers they picked up along their journey across the galaxy. I showed it to one of the librarians and she became my very first number one fan.
After that, I started working on what would become my first complete manuscript at the age of 15. I was depressed and needed an outlet, so I wrote about it, and threw it into the context of a fantasy world. I developed an entire planet with a long history and a mythology where magic and sorcery were real. There were various races with conflicts and ruling systems. I created three separate calendars and cultures. It was a masterpiece.
By the time I got to college, it was ready to submit. I was on about the fifth draft or so, and I was really excited and proud of it. So, I sent it around to about ten literary agents and publishers. And got one response. That was an optimistic rejection letter from a publisher that dealt mostly with audio books but did some publishing also. Or so I thought. Apparently, they only did audio books, but they told me that my story was good and once I got it published, I should go back to them for the audio book.
So I re-edited the manuscript. I took things out, I switched things around, I developed the characters even more, and then I tried to send it out again. This time, I nearly got sucked into the hell of publish-on-demand agencies. That was depressing. The only people who were interested in my manuscript were the ones who were going to suck money out of me in order to put it on any kind of market.
Then I tried self-publishing, but gave up on that when I realized I would never have the time or the money to do my own publicity.
At that point, I was about to graduate college and start teaching Latin, which had always been my back up plan. So, I set the manuscript aside and focused my energies on ending my senior year well, and giving all the time and effort I had into student teaching.
I got married, too.
Once I had gotten into my first teaching job, I was overrun by the amount of time it took out of my life. It was several months before I could even catch my breath. That was when I made a very definite decision about my writing endeavors that changed everything.
Up until that point, I had been treating my writing as if it were a hobby. It was something I did on the side, when I had time, while I focused on other things (like getting a college degree, finding a job, and getting married).
I decided to treat my writing as a career I wanted to pursue and actually spent money on it. I bought two books: How to Grow a Novel by Sol Stein (which I highly recommend to any aspiring writer who also wants to know about editing and publishing. His prior book on writing, Stein on Writing, has much similar practical information, but presented in more detail and only for the writer) and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing for Young Adults. I think I cracked the Idiot’s Guide open once, but the point was that I had it, and I had spent money on it. I had invested in my career as an author.
If you think about, I spent at least $50,000 on a four-year state university just to get the credentials I needed to teach Latin. So, if I was willing to put that much investment into teaching, how could I not expect to put any kind of money in writing? It stood to reason that $15 was an extremely small amount of investment into a career, but the tricks and skills I got out of that book made it worth a full semester at college.
I went back to my manuscript and tore it to pieces. I removed nearly all the characters except the two protagonists, the antagonist, and those secondary characters who were absolutely essential. Then I rewrote the plot. I found the elements I really wanted to keep, the “scenes” that were truly important, and chucked the rest of it into the trash can. Two of the main cultures I had worked so hard at creating were gone. A third minor culture was also completely demolished. The plot devices and minor characters that remain in place of all that wasted effort are mere shadows when compared to the complexity that they once were.
At first, I was skeptical. How could something so diminished from its previous point be worth anything? But as I read the new manuscript out loud to my teenage sister, I realized the beauty and artistic genius that is the simple work. The plot wasn’t muddled in fluffy subplots and the main characters didn’t get lost in a sea of names. It was simple, to the point with an embellishment here or there, and it worked. I was absolutely astonished.
Although I did miss a lot of the elements I had in the enormous 150,000 word manuscript I was trying to market as a college student, I realized that a 30,000 word manuscript said all the same things as the bigger one, and everything else that had been in that enormous pile of words had been unnecessary. It was painful, but only until I realized the benefits of writing to the point: you can spend more time and care on crafting the few characters and plots you have, your writing is easier to polish, and it all looks so much more professional.
Right now, I’ve got the latest version of the manuscript out being read by some close, trusted friends, who I know will give me honest feedback. I spent another $50 on my writing career and bought the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents and a book called The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner. The Guide is extremely useful because it lists literary agents who have already passed their tests for trustworthiness and professionalism, and because its articles are exceptionally helpful to the writer who is trying to publish for the first time. The Forest for the Trees is kind of like How to Grow a Novel in that it gives advice and suggestions to writers, but it brought a much more emotional reaction from me, and portrayed the writing, editing and publishing world in some detail with brutal honesty. It was fascinating to read, but I’m not sure I can tell you right now what I learned from it. How to Grow a Novel and Stein on Writing strike me as much more practical, and I find it interesting that these two editors and authors have such different styles and create such different experiences in the same reader. Neither one is better or worse than the other. They’re just different.
In any case, I’ve researched a list of 25 agents to whom I intend to send query letters and hopefully eventually someone will want a full manuscript. I’ve also looked at a nearby writer’s conference that I hope to attend if my budget permits. What I am most excited about at the moment is the growing concept in my head of writing as a career. Not just a hobby to be done in the midst of other, seemingly more important things, but as the important thing which takes precedence over my other hobbies. That thought alone, to make writing my primary focus (aside from my husband and the idea of a future family) makes me feel this lightness and elation that I can only describe as hope.
I will keep this blog updated of all my successes and failures and of every step along the way to full-fledged authoring, and every now and then, I expect I will toss in a piece on this, that, or the other thing, whatever happened to inspire me that week.
And, until the day that I become a full-time published author, I will remain a Hopeful Writer.
