The Art of Submission
Now THAT is a loaded title! Fortunately (or unfortunately for some of you naughty readers), it has nothing to do with people wearing thigh high leather boots or ball gags. Not that I happen to know anything about those, I’m just saying…
Right, so anyhow, back to submission. Of course I’m talking about writers and their stories! It’s a brave new world for writers, one I’m charging into at full speed. Some writers still feel the need to be published traditionally while others do not. Some even vehemently mock the traditional publishing industry as they rake in six figure months off of self-publishing.
I’m not going to tell you which path you should choose. It’s a personal decision. I started out going through a publisher and have since left that publisher (mostly, I still have two books published with them but I retain full rights to them) so I could do it on my own. But I didn’t really do it on my own, you see, I had the help of a team of talented individuals. It was with this team that Novel Concept Publishing was formed. That’s the company I co-own that publishes my books, my partner’s books, and the books of a handful of other writers that have come to us.
More than a handful have showed up, for the record, but we’ve turned a lot of them away. In a few cases they decided to go and do it their own way instead of working with us. That’s fine too. It can be done, and it can be done with great success. NCP exists to help people who don’t have the network or resources to do it on their own. I can’t imagine not taking complete control of my own writing process, all the way through publication, but for some people it’s not a big deal. They’d rather focus on their day job, writing, needlepoint, alligator wrestling, or whatever floats their boat. If that’s okay with them then it’s okay with me.
The thing the people that we’ve worked with have in common is a great story. They came to us with a story that we liked. It spoke to us and the characters made us want to know more about them. In other words, they wowed us. Personally I think my two favorite writers I’ve had the pleasure of working with are Marc Hamlet and Bob Stewart. Both have considerable talent and great stories to share with the world. I consider myself privileged to have worked with them and I get excited every time I hear they’ve got something new in the works.
For the writers out there thinking about trying to find a place to help them get published, take heed. You need a story that will wow whoever you’re sending it to. Shock them. Excite them. Engage them. Find a way to make your characters stand out. Don’t focus on the plot or the story, focus on making them believe.
And, for the love of all that’s holy, edit the manuscript! Most especially the sample you’re sending. Grammar issues we can deal with. Typos, missing words, or a lack of simple spell checking, on the other hand, is just unprofessional. If you don’t take your work seriously, why should anyone else?
I had the displeasure of shooting down two submissions to NCP recently. I lost interest very quickly since the stories didn’t grab me. They were both filled with the kinds of errors I just mentioned too, which pushed disinterest into irritation rapidly. Both of these stories could very well succeed on their own and I encouraged the writers to pursue that. A rejection from NCP isn’t worth shedding a tear over, not when we’re in an age where so many options abound.
And maybe, just maybe, the manuscript is one that should never be published. Don’t be upset – we all have them. In fact I have a handful of them that I keep agonizing over. I keep telling myself I’m going to go through them and rewrite them, but that takes more time then writing a story from scratch does, or it feels that way. Or maybe it’s the pain I endure when I read the crap I wrote years ago and realize just how bad it really is. Repressed memories are repressed for a reason!
The point is being a writer is about writing. That’s an action word. A verb. It means you’re doing something. If you reach the point where you’re more concerned about what you’ve written instead of what you’re writing, you need to reevaluate. Other than as a bullet point I never even think about the 35 books I’ve written. I think about the book I’m writing or the ones I will soon be writing. Action, my friends, is what gets us where we want to go.
To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com .
