Ignorance is Bliss (Or How I Found the Write Path)
Today I'm excited to be helping out with an exciting project. Carrie Butler, a great writer I only met through this challenge, is looking for compilations for an e-book. The book, which will be free, is set to inspire new writers on their road to publication. The assignment is to write a letter to the younger versions of ourselves when we first started trying to get published. So here's my entry!
Dear Know-It-All:
Stop. Don't send that manuscript. I know you're all proud of yourself because you wrote three books in a couple of months, but you'll soon learn about a thing called revising. You need to read over that manuscript and make sure it's perfect before you send it to an acquiring editor.
Of course, you won't listen. You're so enthusiastic and excited, you're sure an editor will take one look and sign you immediately. Never mind that you don't even know what happens when an editor signs you. You figure you'll learn those things as you go.
You have a long way to go, but perhaps it's best you don't know that. Soon you'll not only join a writer's group, you'll be instrumental in creating it--the first-ever Nashville chapter of Romance Writers of America. You'll meet some incredible people, including some famous novelists. They'll teach you how to handle booksignings and speaking engagements and survive rejection after rejection after rejection.
Interestingly, though, your career will come full-circle before you publish. It's 1995 and there's no market at all for young adult fiction. Middle grade is practically non-existent. You'll have to wait for someone named J.K. Rowling to come along and change everything. Don't bother saving those two young adult manuscripts you wrote last month, though. They're each about as good as any book would be that was created in only a couple of weeks.
The best advice you'll ever hear is that you should always have more than one iron in the fire while querying publishers and agents. That advice will help you through many rejections.
Meanwhile, enjoy the journey. You'll look back on every step of it someday with great fondness. To paraphrase a future crazy teen pop star: It doesn't matter how fast you get there--it's all about the climb.
Name: Stephanie Faris
Title: Ignorance is Bliss
Link: http://www.stephaniefaris.com
I give permission to use this entry in the e-book compilation.
Dear Know-It-All:
Stop. Don't send that manuscript. I know you're all proud of yourself because you wrote three books in a couple of months, but you'll soon learn about a thing called revising. You need to read over that manuscript and make sure it's perfect before you send it to an acquiring editor.
Of course, you won't listen. You're so enthusiastic and excited, you're sure an editor will take one look and sign you immediately. Never mind that you don't even know what happens when an editor signs you. You figure you'll learn those things as you go.
You have a long way to go, but perhaps it's best you don't know that. Soon you'll not only join a writer's group, you'll be instrumental in creating it--the first-ever Nashville chapter of Romance Writers of America. You'll meet some incredible people, including some famous novelists. They'll teach you how to handle booksignings and speaking engagements and survive rejection after rejection after rejection.
Interestingly, though, your career will come full-circle before you publish. It's 1995 and there's no market at all for young adult fiction. Middle grade is practically non-existent. You'll have to wait for someone named J.K. Rowling to come along and change everything. Don't bother saving those two young adult manuscripts you wrote last month, though. They're each about as good as any book would be that was created in only a couple of weeks.
The best advice you'll ever hear is that you should always have more than one iron in the fire while querying publishers and agents. That advice will help you through many rejections.
Meanwhile, enjoy the journey. You'll look back on every step of it someday with great fondness. To paraphrase a future crazy teen pop star: It doesn't matter how fast you get there--it's all about the climb.
Name: Stephanie Faris
Title: Ignorance is Bliss
Link: http://www.stephaniefaris.com
I give permission to use this entry in the e-book compilation.
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