Kallypso Masters
Hi, Tiffany! Thanks so much! Glad you're enjoying my series and hope you'll like the next one, too!
Good for you on writing your first book. Honestly, what you put down on paper that first time through WILL be something that can't be published. Just go into it with that in mind (because while everyone CAN publish a book with great ease these days, that doesn't mean they SHOULD)!
But where a manuscript becomes something publishable is in the revisions, critiquing, and editing stages. If you've never written before, you may not even get to the hiring an editor stage, but if you find a critique partner who is a good writer and understands all those nebulous things that readers don't even notice in our books that are part of that thing called "craft," you'll be able to identify your weaknesses and take workshops, lessons, or find someone to coach you through those so that you can either fix that manuscript or start on your next.
How long did it take me to finish my first? Well, I've been learning the craft since high school by joining writers groups and going to classes/workshops, but would say that I got serious about trying to finish one in the early 1990s. But I just couldn't. So, the first book I ever finished wasn't until 2009. Took me about a month and it was a novella. Being brazen, after edits (not professional ones in those days) I submitted it to Samhain and it was rejected, but they asked to see more, so that's what was called a "good" rejection. I wrote Nobody's Angel (the first, horrible version) in about a month, too, as a novella). I didn't write for the next two years (and I've had lots of those patches in my decades of learning to write), but in 2011 I decided it was time to see if I could write and finish more books. Masters at Arms was drafted in three weeks. DRAFTED. No, not readable, but workable and over the next couple months, it was whipped into shape and published about three months after I started it. Then I rewrote Nobody's Angel TWICE before releasing a really rough version about six weeks after Masters. (We had been simultaneously editing both of these over the summer. But I only had one paid editor and had really rushed that out after a major rewrite in the three weeks prior to release--big mistake and I'm sure there are still hundreds of those cringe-worthy versions out there on e-readers.)
I took two months to write NOBODY'S HERO and thought I could never write anything better than that. But the thing with writing is that you learn as you go. Your skill level improves, and you grow as a writer. That said, I have eight full or partial manuscripts that I'd never deem worth a reader's time and money. Not everything we write needs to be read, but it NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN because that's the ONLY way to learn to write. I hope that makes sense!
So, sit down and start writing that first awful draft. Fill your bookshelf with books on how to write. (I just picked up Stephen King's ON WRITING this weekend--you never learn all you need to know. It's good to learn something new every month and to keep getting better.)
And then keep writing. Forget about publishing, just focus now on learning HOW to write. It's not something that comes to 99.99999% of us instinctively. And it's hard work. Just persevere and keep writing and learning, find a support team that can help you grow. (Try to avoid your high-school English teachers and such and find someone who writes in your genre who knows something about writing to go to for advice! Genre writing is not like LIT-tra-chure and has it's own rules and standards that need to be learned before you can later break the rules intentionally and not out of ignorance.
Good luck and I hope you have as much fun on your writing journey as I have had. I probably could have published a decade earlier, but I don't think I'd have been nearly as happy if I had. I needed to be an indie author who could do whatever she wanted in her series and not make it a cookie-cutter one--and that wasn't possible in the days of publisher rules.
Kally
Good for you on writing your first book. Honestly, what you put down on paper that first time through WILL be something that can't be published. Just go into it with that in mind (because while everyone CAN publish a book with great ease these days, that doesn't mean they SHOULD)!
But where a manuscript becomes something publishable is in the revisions, critiquing, and editing stages. If you've never written before, you may not even get to the hiring an editor stage, but if you find a critique partner who is a good writer and understands all those nebulous things that readers don't even notice in our books that are part of that thing called "craft," you'll be able to identify your weaknesses and take workshops, lessons, or find someone to coach you through those so that you can either fix that manuscript or start on your next.
How long did it take me to finish my first? Well, I've been learning the craft since high school by joining writers groups and going to classes/workshops, but would say that I got serious about trying to finish one in the early 1990s. But I just couldn't. So, the first book I ever finished wasn't until 2009. Took me about a month and it was a novella. Being brazen, after edits (not professional ones in those days) I submitted it to Samhain and it was rejected, but they asked to see more, so that's what was called a "good" rejection. I wrote Nobody's Angel (the first, horrible version) in about a month, too, as a novella). I didn't write for the next two years (and I've had lots of those patches in my decades of learning to write), but in 2011 I decided it was time to see if I could write and finish more books. Masters at Arms was drafted in three weeks. DRAFTED. No, not readable, but workable and over the next couple months, it was whipped into shape and published about three months after I started it. Then I rewrote Nobody's Angel TWICE before releasing a really rough version about six weeks after Masters. (We had been simultaneously editing both of these over the summer. But I only had one paid editor and had really rushed that out after a major rewrite in the three weeks prior to release--big mistake and I'm sure there are still hundreds of those cringe-worthy versions out there on e-readers.)
I took two months to write NOBODY'S HERO and thought I could never write anything better than that. But the thing with writing is that you learn as you go. Your skill level improves, and you grow as a writer. That said, I have eight full or partial manuscripts that I'd never deem worth a reader's time and money. Not everything we write needs to be read, but it NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN because that's the ONLY way to learn to write. I hope that makes sense!
So, sit down and start writing that first awful draft. Fill your bookshelf with books on how to write. (I just picked up Stephen King's ON WRITING this weekend--you never learn all you need to know. It's good to learn something new every month and to keep getting better.)
And then keep writing. Forget about publishing, just focus now on learning HOW to write. It's not something that comes to 99.99999% of us instinctively. And it's hard work. Just persevere and keep writing and learning, find a support team that can help you grow. (Try to avoid your high-school English teachers and such and find someone who writes in your genre who knows something about writing to go to for advice! Genre writing is not like LIT-tra-chure and has it's own rules and standards that need to be learned before you can later break the rules intentionally and not out of ignorance.
Good luck and I hope you have as much fun on your writing journey as I have had. I probably could have published a decade earlier, but I don't think I'd have been nearly as happy if I had. I needed to be an indie author who could do whatever she wanted in her series and not make it a cookie-cutter one--and that wasn't possible in the days of publisher rules.
Kally
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