I Published the NaNo-Novel That Didn’t Win

During our “Now What?” Months, we’re talking to Wrimos who’ve published their NaNoWriMo projects and asking them about the steps they took to make it happen. Today, participant Emily Nakanishi  shares what she’s learned about the ups and downs of small publishing, self-publishing, and the different ways stories are meant to be told:

November of 2012 was an incredibly busy time for me. I was in my first year of college, in a creative writing class with a difficult teacher, and everything was incredibly overwhelming at the time. I wasn’t even sure that I could participate in NaNo, but I hadn’t skipped a year yet and I wasn’t about to start.

I remember that I wrote Your Heart Was a Legend in the first five or so days. I had planned to write something about growing up gay in small town America–what came out was ten thousand words of a character in love with his mostly straight best friend. It was when I finished the paragraph that would become the ending that I realized it was two in the morning, and I had a short story due in my creative writing class the next day. So I did what any exhausted college student in my situation would do–I printed off and turned in my NaNo novel.

When it came down to it, I fell in love with Your Heart Was a Legend and put so much time into polishing and perfecting it that I wasn’t able to finish NaNoWriMo that year, and that’s okay. It taught me a valuable lesson: Some stories are meant to be told in fifty thousand or a hundred thousand words. This story was meant to be told in ten thousand.

Publishing was an entirely different beast than writing. I guess I was used to being on top of the class, being a big fish in a small school. I’ll be the first to tell you that I don’t take criticism well (although I’m getting better), and so those first rejections were hard. My story was rough and abrasive, with obscene language, and it couldn’t be picked up by regular romance writers–the romantic quality just wasn’t there. “It’s too realistic,” one editor told me.

From this I learned two things. One, the story has to match the editor’s curtains that day–meaning whether or not you get accepted is all up to that editor in question. Two, for every rejection I got, I put my big girl pants on, and I sent it out to two more publications. Finally, I got a hit, from a small publishing company focused on LGBT+ stories.

“Remember that you’re doing this because you love writing, and keep that love alive as you go.”

I won’t say it’s been all sunshine and rainbows, because it hasn’t. Small publishing companies are, in fact, small, and I maybe made $50 total off of my book. I was unused to the world of marketing, so that’s partly on me. Now, my publishing company is going under, which means that I have a novel that’s been previously published, and only a select few publishing companies want that.

So this time, instead of going through the hassle of getting rejection after rejection, I’ve self-published with Kindle Direct. While this method isn’t right for every book, I certainly feel it’s worth a try for this one, maybe with some better marketing on my end.

Really, I only have a little advice for when you decide to publish. Whatever you do, don’t give up. You’ll find that editor that loves your story; it may just take a few tries. If your publishing company doesn’t do much marketing for you, then pick up the slack. Make a Goodreads author page, make a Facebook page, make a Tumblr. And lastly, remember that you’re doing this because you love writing, and keep that love alive as you go. The game doesn’t end with publishing, it only ends when you stop writing.

Emily Nakanishi is a perpetual student working to get a degree in writing. She spends most of her days scrolling through Tumblr and trying to find inspiration for her many hobbies. She currently lives in Missouri with her two cats. She actively encourages people to come say hi, so stop by her Tumblr anytime at inmywilderness.tumblr.com. Her novel, Your Heart Was a Legend, is currently available on Amazon.

Top photo by Flickr user Tim Norris.