#have I ever even submitted a manuscript to a publisher

[princessmadafu]

The Scobie Roadshow Slithers on...

There are better writers than I am who have already covered a lot of this week's Scobie Doo-Doo, but there is an area where I am well qualified to comment. I worked for many years as a multilingual researcher and translator. I worked with authors, TV shows, even a couple of movie producers. Oh and I translated medical reports for holiday-makers who'd had emergency treatment in Spain, which sometimes got a bit weird and once involved a bunch of daffodils.

When you're translating, the golden rule is: you are not allowed to change, add or omit anything, ANYTHING, that isn't in the original manuscript. Under pain of being sued for thousands of dollars. Changes, additions and omissions lie solely with the author, his editors and his publishers.

So why isn't Scobie suing his Dutch translators if the doo-doo is all their fault?

Let me think...

Answer: It's not their fault, they translated what they were given. No changes, no additions, no omissions.

Why isn't he suing his editors and publishers? Erm... I think money might come into that one. Massive, and possibly carefully calculated, publicity to enrich the Scobie by spreading the doo-doo.

As a translator, you receive the manuscript. You read it through in its entirety, several times, to get the feel for the author, his style, his grammar, his idio- idiopsycho- idiopsychosyncracies- wait, I'm good at my job - his pet peeves! And you make notes on how to replicate all this and reproduce his doo-doo in a different language. You print off a working draft of the original doo-doo, with additional spacing to allow for your careful thoughts (I'm old-fashioned, I like to do this bit with a pencil; the young ones probably do it all on computer these days) and you translate all the easy stuff you can do off the top of your head. Then you go through it again, filling in the worrying bits, usually with an assistant, editor or other colleague, and working on the style, grammar, punctuation, cliches, idioms and colloquialisms etc etc etc, always aiming to reproduce the author's authentic voice without getting too hung up on what a nasty piece of work you're dealing with.

You type up your final draft and submit it to the publisher. The whole process takes months of careful work, checking and double-checking and triple-checking.

There's no way the two names are there by accident.

On the positive side, Scobie's doo-doo has hit the fan and splattered right back in his face. He may think his face is so plastic and cleanable with a wet-wipe that the doo-doo will just slide off, but I don't see that happening. He's annoyed too many people.

Meanwhile the Montecito Twosome remain as Gruesome as ever. Shall we have a good pray for their well-being? Three, two, one...

OK, so that's a No then!

[performativezippers]

If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find a writing agent to represent you? Been interested in writing a book for a while and I thought you might have some pointers since your posts are so informative and I think you’re an awesome writer :)

Great question, and thank you so much!

Background: The reason you get an agent is because you're interested in having your book published by a publisher (not self-publishing). Not all publishing houses require you to have an agent, but all of the big ones do, and many of the other legit ones. Some big exceptions are boutique small presses, like Ylva, for example, who accept unagented submissions and sometimes even solicit people.

But in most cases, if you want to be published by a publishing house, you need an agent, which is because these houses do not accept book submissions from authors. they only accept them from agents; ergo, to be published you need to submit, and to submit you need an agent.

Answer to your question: The way you get an agent is by applying, a lot like a job application. Here are the steps:

You need to write your whole book first (unless it's nonfiction) and have it be as good as you can possibly make it. That means beta readers, editing rounds, everything. Get it to the level where if you were self publishing, you'd be done.

You write what's called a query letter for your book, which is essentially a cover letter. Title, word count, comparison titles, plot hook, character intros, take them through about 50% of the plot, establish clear stakes, plus a bio about you. All of this in 400 words, mind you. This is often the hardest thing you'll ever write. I find the podcast "The Shit No One Tells You About Writing" to be the very best way to learn how to do this, and also a LOT of great stuff about writing craft. I listen religiously even though I haven't queried in years.

Research agents. There are thousands of agents out there. Some don't rep in your genre, some are not accepting queries (only working with the clients they already have). You can follow them on social media and search "Manuscript Wishlist" or MSWL to see what they are looking for.

Start querying! Send your query letter and sample pages (usually the first 10-50 pages, depending on what each specific agent wants) to agents, usually in batches of 10-15 at a time.

WAIT

Some agents get back to you very quickly. Most never get back to you at all, and you figure sometime between 6 weeks and 6 months is a pass. It's a very awful, sad, dehumanizing process that you need to be prepared for.

I queried for a year. I queried 65 agents. I only received one offer of representation. I think this low success rate was because I had a weird book that was outside of any typical genre (this was my fault, not that I created something new) and a bad query letter, but my writing was good and my now-agent saw potential in me.

But I will say this: If the only reason you want to write a book is to be published, you should either be good with self-publishing, or not do it. The odds of being published are astoundingly low. There are many many more talented authors than there are slots for debut novels. It takes talent and perseverance and luck to make it through all of these processes and emerge with a book deal, especially from a large publishing house that will pay you an advance and treat you well.

So I'd say, write the book if you want to write the book. Make it a joyful process whose best possible outcome is it being written. And then when you're done with it, if you're ready to drink from a firehose of research, resources, rejection, and hope, then fucking do it!

#ask zipps #publishing #publishing fiction #querying

[l-e-morgan-author]

Draft cover for the on-newsletter-signup free stories which I haven't finished editing yet. (So you can't have them yet; I'll finish editing them to my satisfaction before I open up my email newsletter.)

Further ramble below; it got kind of long. First about what these stories are about, then more rambling about my current works-in-progress and specifically aspects of Patience, Changing that I'm enjoying. Might recycle some of this for the next newsletter tbh.

A quick and not-edited summary of each story:

Ever Changing, Ever Near - Hadassah is different to everyone else, but despite that finds great joy in the changing seasons.

A Fragile Solace - Hadassah and Nem are friends. Despite what happens after, she treasures the friendship that they have.

Both stories were entered to (different) local competitions and were highly commended. I can't give an estimated story length because at least A Fragile Solace requires a bunch of editing that may lengthen it. Since I no longer have a word count requirement because I'm not planning on submitting them to any other competitions, I can go ham on them.

In case you don't know who Hadassah is, Hadassah is from the 2022(? maybe '23) Inklings challenge, which I wrote about 8k of. I was Team Lewis, portal fantasy. A very rough summary is that Hadassah is an autistic girl in a neurotypical world, one of the peasants of that world and chosen to be sent through a portal. Nobody knows what lies beyond. For Hadassah, what lies beyond is found family such as she hasn't experienced her entire life.

I found getting into her head unreasonably hard at the time, which is why I wanted to write stories about her, and why I haven't finished drafting her story. With more understanding of autistic people and also myself than I had then, I expect that when I get back to that properly I'll find it a lot easier to write.

I also intend to edit The Patience of Hope to be another newsletter freebie - the edited version, I mean. I intend to leave the first draft up on my website indefinitely, even if an edited version is published as part of something else (such as A Quiet Patience, though with the number of novellas I've got planned, that might be quite long...). But that's for a little way down the road, not yet.

As for a general update on writing generally, I've written a little bit more of Hands Made for Gentleness, but not much. That will require a lot of working with it once the first draft is done, but I've written up a rough outline of the rest of the main story beats, and I have a clearer idea where I'm going. I'm ideally going to finish drafting Patience, Changing before I really get back to that, which is about 20k away (yay!). I'm thoroughly into the third act, figuring out I need to know my characters better so the third act will require a good deal of rewriting, even though the bones are good. I'm pleased with the balance of characters, and at times even though I'm going "Hmm this needs work", I can switch that off and just work on it. I've been writing drabbles every day for this month, and currently I'm one (1) day behind. The drabbles have been helpful, providing scene ideas I can flesh out into full scenes, so they might be a bit janky in context, but I can edit that later.

I've really enjoyed two characters I didn't intend to include in this manuscript: Hannah (Patience's aunt) and Connie (who Patience meets in hospital). Hannah is a symbol of the seriousness of anorexia, and I am not looking forward to writing her death. At present the scene I'm writing is set on the 19th of November, 2018, and Hannah dies on the 16th of December, 2018. She's already written the letter to Patience, as well as the anonymous letter Patience doesn't realise is from her and which needs rewriting. But she has to die and it will tear my heart out to write her, though I've got to read at least a good chunk of A Grief Observed (C. S. Lewis) before I write about that. At present her death is set for the third last chapter, but I expect to rearrange things - events that I thought would work for two chapters turned out I'll need to significantly rewrite to get to even one chapter, so I'll probably use those events to close the second act rather than close the second act and open the third act as well, and therefore rearrange things to give enough space for Hannah's death. If I go over my planned word count in these chapters that's fine; whatever works. I just don't want to go under.

Having the 3k aim has been really good, because some of the time it's forced me to write 'filler' that I reread and am convinced I'll keep in, and sometimes it's kept me to only that long which is good practise too.

Oh, and also! The other character I've enjoyed. Connie. Connie's in hospital following a suicide attempt, but the psych ward's full up and she's not considered at high risk so she's in a general paeds ward, which is where she meets Patience. She isn't particularly forthcoming about why she's in, and Patience respects that. She suspects but is only told right at the end:

“You make me brave,” she said to Patience, just before she was transferred. “I came in here with a suicide attempt and you have made me discover I want to live. Live! When living has been a slow death all this time. You make me want to live. I wasn’t going to make it and I was okay with that. Now I’m going to fight, because of you.”

They keep in touch afterwards, and probably when I edit The Patience of Hope I'll include a scene with Connie in it. Because just as Hannah has to die, Connie has to live. I love the way both of these characters add to Patience's journey, but without trivialising her own very real issues. That's definitely something I'll have to do an edit pass to make sure I'm not doing, because yes, in the grand scheme of things Patience's hangups are very small but to her they're huge. Which is why I held off on writing this story for a good five years, and I'm terribly glad I did, because this story is far better than it would have been years ago.

Anyway. I'm rambling. All this to say that while I'm struggling a bit with writing it, Patience is still going swimmingly. I anticipate finishing the draft either by end of this month (stretch goal) or next month (realistic goal). Then I can dive back into Hands Made for Gentleness and maybe plotting The Time Travelling Midwife and/or Hadassah's story on the side.

I'm also having a fantastic time with Patience and Nathan's interactions at thirteen/fourteen:

“You’ll get through it,” he said. “In Christ, Patience. In Christ.” She smiled at him. He was very dear to her, standing there awkwardly and smiling his dear awkward smile back.

#tw suicide #hadassah winter #patience changing #patience shepherd #hands made for gentleness #I forget any other tags I want for this xD taglist coming in reblog

[flameswallower]

I'm visiting my parents' house for the first time in some years, and have found some interesting Briar Juvenilia! Here are links to bsky threads I made about the stuff I found that I feel like sharing:

Pages from a zine I made in early 2006, when I was 16 years old and in the eleventh grade

An extremely kind personal rejection note from Gavin J. Grant in response to a short story I wrote and submitted to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet at age 18, in probably April or May of 2008 (by the time I received the rejection, in July, I had turned 19). Also the first page of that story; he couldn't return the full manuscript because I underpaid on postage!

I think even five or six years ago I would have been embarrassed to share stuff like this with the general public. But now I feel a lot of tenderness towards the person I was half my life ago, and even though I've changed a lot, it no longer seems to me that I should disavow having been that person or try to forget about that person. There is more continuity than I would have perceived from a lesser distance, and honestly, I was pretty cool! I genuinely think that. I was a cool teenager, and very gifted/perceptive/precocious in some ways, and I had a lot of chutzpah or moxie or whatever you want to call it. I was handing this zine full of my weird hallucinatory poetry out to everyone I knew at school, including my teachers and kids who were not my friends! I was submitting the first short story I ever wrote that I was happy with to a magazine that published writers like Jeffery Ford and Nalo Hopkinson and Karen Russell!

#personal post

[aerodaltonimperial]

I did promise that I would try to explain how horrible (soul-crushing) the publishing world is, so at least people understood that I’m standing on the wreckage of all my self-confidence, so here’s the super abridged version. I suspect most people don’t know what it takes to be trad published—for our purposes here, trad published is going to be published by a major publisher with distribution. Normally this is the Big 5 but some of the smaller houses would still count here. We are not counting indie pubs here, because they have no distribution (meaning they are not in libraries or book stores), and I have already had experience with them and it was horrifically disappointing.

So you’ve written a book. That’s great. Now you have to try and find a literary agent, because you can’t submit to any of the Big 5 (normally) without an agent doing it for you, so you have to embark into the query trenches. Querying is where you spend a shit-ton of time researching lit agents (and weeding out the schmagents and the agencies with bad reps by trolling forums and somehow tapping into a whisper network; yeah, good luck with that if you aren’t in the biz already) and then you send them a little letter about your book and anywhere from 5 to 25 pages of the manuscript itself (depending on what they ask for, and every agent is different). The opening pages, so you’ve hopefully spent three weeks constantly tearing those pages apart and re-writing them, because you have approximately 3 seconds to be AMAZINGLY GOOD and catch their eye.

Agents all rep different age categories and genres. You have to filter through them to find the ones that rep what you write, and are open to queries (many are NEVER open, or open only to referrals from existing clients, or open only to expensive conference live-pitches, so again, good luck!) Some of them will throw up MSWLs (manuscript wish lists) and then you might find one that is asking for something very similar to what you wrote, and can toss it their way. Depending on what you write, you might have 30 agents to query (niche genres) or 100 agents to query (romance, women’s fiction, thrillers).

Agents are extremely busy. On average, the response time can be anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 years (no, I’m not kidding). Most of the lit agencies have a rule where you can’t submit to more than one agent at a time, so you are stuck waiting for the first rejection before you can query another agent there, and in at least a third of the situations, you will simply never get it. You’ll have to mark it as “closed, no response” after about 120 days and assume it’s a no. Some agencies STILL run by the “no from one is a no from all” which is BULLSHIT so you have to REALLY HOPE the one agent in the agency you picked to query will like your shit cause you can’t query anyone else.

And then you wait for the responses to roll in. Most will be form rejections. A few might be requests for more (partial or full manuscripts). And like I said, probably a third or higher will simply never get back to you. Ever. Generally, after about 6 months, you are probably done querying, with some outliers who will take a year to get back to you if they do at all.

If you get LUCKY and one of them requests your full manuscript, hooray! Now you get to wait even longer while they read it. If you are VERY VERY lucky, that agent might offer representation on it. They have to really love it. They will ask you for a call (these are all done via Zoom or the like, nowadays). Sometimes, you might get an R&R—or, a revise & resubmit, where the agent asks for changes. There is no guarantee that doing them will please them enough to get an offer on it. General consensus is that R&Rs only slightly raise your odds for getting an offer, and about 70% of them will still result in a rejection.

Fun thing about getting an offer of rep: industry standard is that you ask for 2 weeks to contact all the OTHER agents who still have your query and/or materials so you can let them know that you have an offer. And this is where my LEAST FAVORITE FUCKING PART of this industry comes in. It’s practically the tenet that publishing was built on—people only want shit that someone else already wants. Any outstanding queries, you “nudge” to let them know you have an offer and your timeline. Any outstanding submissions, you let them know they gotta read fast. You WILL get a shit ton of agents asking for your manuscript here, because SUDDENLY SOMEONE ELSE WANTS IT so it must be great. (On my only successful manuscript, my request rate for materials was 8% pre-offer. After my offer, it shot up to 60%. I will die furious about this.)

You may, if you are super duper lucky, even get multiple offers, and then you have to decide which agent you are going to choose.

So if you get this far, GOOD JOB. You have beaten 95% of the other writers out there. You are still doing all of this for free. And you still have more to go through! From here on out, now that you are with an agent, you get to go on “submission,” where your agent sends your book out to editors that they have (hopefully) matched up genres/likes with. And it’s just like querying, only your agent does it instead of you, and you sit at home and wait EVEN MORE TIME for overworked, underpaid editors to somehow fall in love with your book.

Maybe one of them does! Then you get to go to something called “second reads.” This is where the whole TEAM at the publishing house reads it and most of the time, they all have to agree. Then you have to go to ACQUISITIONS, which is a meeting at the publishing house where the editor has to pitch your book and ask the rich CEOs for money to offer on it. Your book can die at any one of these milestones: it can be rejected by editors, it can be rejected at second reads, and it can be refused at acquisitions. This process takes anywhere from 1 day (if you are super lucky and probably shit gold) to 2 years, and when all the editors are exhausted, your book is officially dead on sub.

If you DO HAPPEN TO GET THROUGH THIS and get an ACTUAL BOOK DEAL, you are the lucky 1%. And you might finally, FINALLY, get paid for the work you have done. (In installments, spread out over years, depending on how much of an advance you get.)

Or, like a whooooole bunch of us, you end up figuring out that your agent, for whatever reason, isn’t working for you. Maybe you want to write a genre next that they don’t rep. Maybe they leave the industry for whatever reason. Maybe you have a mismatch of communication/expectations/needs. Maybe they suck at being an agent and stop doing what they are supposed to do (like mine). And then you end up either leaving your agent or getting dropped by your agent, and you are back to square one all over again.

Remember that every time you have to query again, or go on submission again, you have to have a new book ready. The people who succeed at this industry have time, money, and luck; the more of those you have, the better you will do. A LARGE number of writers are bankrolled by a partner and/or parent and/or generational wealth who pays the bills for them, because otherwise, it’s pretty damn hard to find enough time to write as much as you need to.

And every single one of those rejections is going to eat away at you, inch by inch by inch, until you’ve amassed more than 150 of them representing all the times you just weren’t fucking good enough. Then you have to decide: do I keep doing this? It’s been years. It’s been double digit books. How much of my life and time am I going to waste on this fruitless quest? And I guess that’s the question you gotta answer lol.

#don't reblog this we do not need this bullshit connected to me

[lollytea]

I think book publishing and the promotion of books depends on one key question. Is the book out of passion, for the benefits, or for fame and glory

Don't quote me on this cuz I don't feel like going looking for sources. So I could be wrong about a few things. But based on what I've learned over the years, getting a book deal is heavily reliant on certain factors. Firstly, it's strongly recommended that you have an agent. Publishing houses are unlikely to even LOOK at a submitted manuscript unless there's an agent involved.

Secondly, a lot of the responsibility of marketing the book falls on the author themself. As a result, publishers are not likely to take a chance on just anybody. In our current social climate, the safest authors to sign are the ones who already have a strong social media presence, guaranteeing that they'll have an audience to advertise the book to. The annoying stuff on booktok where authors use snappy ao3 tropes to summarise their books is kinda their only option in a lot of cases. Its a strong effective means of advertising. It guarantees clicks, engagement, enthusiasm etc.

Thirdly, once you sign a deal, the book kinda stops belonging entirely to you. This isn't entirely a bad thing. Editors catch mistakes, flaws in the story and they can even give advice that will significantly improve the final draft. But you lose a lot of the freedom to write whatever the fuck you want and now have to abide by the restrictions put on you. Because now your work is their product so they have to make sure its up to scratch.

Its fun to think that if your manuscript is just amazing enough, you'll manage to blow the minds of some random publishing house and they'll do all the work, desperate just to get your genius story out into the world and they'll let you write whatever you want forever. But it's a lot more complicated than that.

There's a feature on amazon that will let you turn your manuscript into a physical book and then sell it on the site, making it super easy for anybody to become a self published author. I figure that if I ever do write anything, I'll probably just do that. I'll never have anything I write on bookshop shelves but oh well. A book is a book :D

[olivieblake]

Hey, Olivie! I'm in need of advice, and a bit of assurance, but mainly advice.

Right now, the traditional publishing industry is - pardon my French - shit, and I'm in a bit of a pickle. I'm on the verge of querying my second manuscript, and for context, it was very well received by my closest circle, my critique partners, and several agents and editors who wanted to see the manuscript on their desks in 2022 during pitch events. However, revisions took a bit longer than anticipated due to school and work on my end. It's 2023 now, and I'm almost ready to submit, but now I'm not so sure of this book, or my career.

Trends come and go, and right now, I'm not sure if my book would do well in the current market. My first book, ironically, was a romantasy I wrote two years prior, and now, it might hypothetically do better. But that isn't the main point - I'm tired of writing projects that fall wayside of what's desired by agents and publishers mainstream, by just a couple of years or a couple inches off the mark. Additionally, right now, there are fewer agents and editors to go around due to several scandals I won't specifically name. It just feels like every single barrier is up against me right now. Publishing is a business, and I don't know if I'm a desired product.

I know my worth. I know I'm qualified, and I'm a writer with a fair bit of experience under my belt, but right now, I just don't know if the traditional industry is right for me or not, and I'm seriously doubting the idea of having a future part-time career - or even a full-time one eventually at all. I really don't want to go through indie publishing, since I don't have the resources nor time to market myself without a team on my side. And to be fair, I'm almost a college graduate (undergrad, senior), so this might be jitters talking, but so is my anxiety. I'm mixed Southeast/East Asian, so given publishing's fascination with slotting Asian voices into neatly packaged, "exotic" hashtag Diverse Voices Packages - I just don't know if my not-neat voice is wanted, or will ever be needed.

It would kill me, but...I don't know if I should just stop and come back in a couple of years, or just stop altogether. I'm not sure I'm strong enough to follow through with my current book and face another set of rejections, then write nine more books and face nine more rejections. TLDR: the pessimist in me is having A Time. any advice gladly appreciated!!!

okay

I'm not going to lie to you

I was nodding along sympathetically and then

I got to your age

and I burst out laughing

I laughed OUT LOUD oh my god my sweet summer child

(for reference: I am 34, I have no formal writing training, I started trying to get published when I was 27, I didn't see any success until I was 31, at your age I had a masters degree and a scholarship to law school and was very sure I was going to be a lawyer. I am. not one)

okay so laughter aside, please allow me to tell you gently, very gently, that at this age, you're not supposed to know what you want, you're not necessarily supposed to see your career, and you're not meant to understand if there is a place for you in the market until you try. look, I won't lie to you, traditional publishing is a life filled with rejection on every floor. there is no level of success where you will no longer hear no. and yeah, it's hard to find your way in—I tried for five years before I got my first publishing contract, and showed no particular success until a completely different self-published book went viral through essentially no doing of my own an entire year after that. everything that happens in publishing is a spectacular accident. and what's very crazy to me about the fact that I'm currently sitting in my third week on the nyt bestseller list is that this book was actually my first self-published book—I wrote it six years ago, when all of publishing was telling me no. I had no reason to believe I had any talent for writing, but I did it anyway, because I loved it and only felt alive while I was doing it. the fact that it is successful now, with nothing having changed along the way except for someone giving me a chance in this industry, is why I am laughing. because everything is an accident and all of this is mess.

so, the choices you make in publishing CANNOT be about external markers of success. it can't be about money (that is, beyond the question of how will you survive while writing—I could because I had a freelance job and my husband's income to help me. you'll need either family money, a partner with an income, or a job). it can't be about marketability. your desire to publish has to come from somewhere innate and you have to be able to take no and keep going. for the question of self/traditional publishing, the main issue is: do you want to run your own business? you can self-publish so long as you don't mind managing your own editorial, sales, PR, production, and marketing. if you have the resources to get started, and if it's a genre/age category that has shown success (adult SFF or romance), it is a totally valid way to make a living. if you, like me, prefer not to handle your own production/marketing etc, then traditional publishing is the way, but you will encounter all of the gatekeepers along the way who might say no. so you have to think how you're willing to deal with that, and how you will pay the rent and buy the groceries over the course of publishing's very lengthy timeline, where you will make your advance in 3rds (so about 1/3 per year through the production process) and likely have to consider supplementing your writing with a full or part time job.

basically, the point is: query the book. you have nothing to lose. do it now before the winter holidays because nobody in publishing reads over the holidays. don't worry about whether your voice is wanted. you already know it is. send it out. the worst you can hear is no. and then try again, or don't! but my advice is always shoot your shot, and your resiliency and adaptability is what will carry you through this process, more so than sweat or skill. getting an agent or a publishing deal is not what will make you believe in your talent. you have to believe in it now, and the love and the work you put into the stories you tell is what will be rewarded in time

#writing advisements #big sistering

[kabillieu]

This is going to sound batshit conceited, but the poems I'm sending out to journals from my new manuscript are mostly doing really well. They're getting picked up by great journals, many (all???) of which I've been trying to be published in for years. I got an acceptance just now from a lovely journal that I've been submitting to since I started sending out poems in 2015 or so. I also am pretty sure this manuscript of poems, in general, is good. Like, I wrote a dang good book.

And it is all sooooo painful. Every time I get good news about an acceptance, or every time one of these poems is published, it makes me cry. I put together a stellar AWP panel that takes as its inspiration the topic of my manuscript, and I don't even want to do it. It's hard and sad. I will do it. But I take so little joy from it, even though it's a big accomplishment to have a panel accepted, and even though I'm literally going to get to have a conversation with some of the writers I admire most via this panel.

I think the holidays are bothering me this year. Last year I was still very much in a new-baby fog, and now I have an older baby who tells me no all the time and is going to be a teenager as soon as I blink my eyes. Another thing that is really, really bothering me is that poor woman who had to get flown out of Texas to get an abortion midway through her pregnancy for a baby with trisomy 18 because Texas's courts were volleying her request for an abortion with a nonviable fetus back and forth like it's sports.

At least once a week, I feel grateful that I don't have a uterus anymore and can never, ever, ever, ever again accidentally get pregnant. How fucked up is that? This country hates women. And it's only going to get worse.

So, yes, I'm struggling. With the holidays. With the past. With the present. With the poems I wrote (good poems!) that are being published (by good journals!).

And I'm going to start sending out my manuscript next month. And it's time, but it makes me deeply sad. I love writing! I love publishing! I love being a poet! But it makes my pain always so...present! Like, why can't I just be an emotionless husk lol. All this vulnerability hurts!

[hypaalicious]

Silly things I misunderstood in my quest to be a Professional Writer ™️

Dunno why I’m thinking of this today, and idk if it’s my neurodivergency causing the issues or just me being dumb asf in general… but man did I ever get butthurt over unspoken caveats I didn’t peep until after the fact.

For example, when I first finished my manuscript and got it accepted, I wanted to join a writer’s guild. So naturally, I thought of the WGA.

Imagine my shock that authors apparently don’t count as “writers”. I just sat there confused like “I literally write? Why call yourselves a writer’s guild when you do not mean all writers?”

So I found that there’s an author’s guild, and looked to join that… but apparently in order to even qualify you have to basically be a bestseller already. So much for that. 🥴

Another example is when I found a community of Black female indie authors to join and help promote my book. I submitted an application and got ghosted, didn’t understand why… until I noticed that everyone in the group are self-published authors and guessed that was the rub.

Once again, I was left hurt and confused like “I am literally a Black woman who writes and is indie. Your description states that I am the exact type of person to join. But I am apparently not the right kind of Black woman author to be accepted? That kinda sucks.”

I used to try and participate in writing workshops too, especially for unpublished marginalized voices and such, and was told I wasn’t a fit… despite me literally being a marginalized voice who (at the time) had never been published. I get frustrated at the invisible rules that blindside me because I take shit too literally, and then I’m left wondering if there’s any place someone like me actually belongs.

Well. I know where I belong; on Tumblr. 😂😂

#truly a meandering post I’ve made here but that’s just how my brain functions #I still don’t really know where to ‘belong’ especially as an author with all of my apparent setbacks #but I’ve slowly learned to just deal with it #if I’m meant to be somewhere I’ll find myself there

[drdemonprince]

Question for you as someone who’s published books. I want to publish books, but trying to land an agent/sell a manuscript/get through whatever else goes on after that seems insurmountable—all I have to show for my efforts so far are a bunch of rejections. I’m too much of an internet wallflower to self-publish, no one would ever even notice my writing that way. I keep writing, the writing is starting to pile up, but the publishing industry increasingly looks like a soul-crushing grind. I don’t need the money from selling books, but I’d kind of like it. Is it even worth bothering with the publishing industry, and if yes (or if maybe) do you have any strategies for pushing through rejections? How many rejections are “normal” vs how many rejections equal “your work sucks, give up?”

I wouldn't quantify it in number of rejections, so much as in years. I think if you're newly starting out, you can expect to spend about ten years or more in relative obscurity, and by then you'll have a sense of whether it's worth continuing on or not. if you're a really confident and strong writer already with a lot of experience taking feedback and improving your own work based on it, we could maybe say five years instead.

I'm basing this number on my own experience, as well as what other authors have publicly said (Linsday Ellis' video on publishing is a pretty good overview of how long, nonlinear, and messy the process is, even for someone super well known like her.)

If you don't need the money and you don't want to go the conventional publishing route, artisanal publishing may be the right route for you. The book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur was helpful to me when I was learning to self-publish my own fiction back in the mid 2010's. Smashwords' self publishing guide is helpful for all the formatting-side stuff.

Getting a publication deal typically requires an extensive publishing record (online or in magazines), a large social media following, and securing a killer agent, and each of those steps requires typically many years of effort, and many people fail at it. So I would not recommend one embark on that process unless they actively enjoy it.

I love writing and often it comes easy. though of course some days I hate it, i can't seem to stop doing it. and I love posting, and can't seem to be stopped from doing it. If I didn't love the journey itself, it would have never been worth doing, and I would not have succeeded at it. But even if you love it, you might not ever succeed, so it's best to only do it because it feels worthwhile on its own merits.

another thought that occurred to me is that since you don't like the online posting game, you might enjoy going to authors' conferences like AWP, attending workshops, and courting smaller presses. you can get more of a personal interaction there, especially if there is a local small press you actively like the work of and you can build relationships with the editors and their authors by going to their launches, reading series, submitting work to their edited collections, etc. it will still take years to germinate into something most likely, but that might be more your style.

[americanrecord]

Hey, Kelsey! 🖤

Just checking in to see how you’ve been doing. I’ve not been getting on Tumblr as much as I used to but I wanted you to know I do pop in on your blog from time to time to (try to) stay updated on the happenings of your life. How are your books coming? I know you started on this new one with all new characters and the religious theme and that’s pretty exciting. And interesting. I’ll look forward to hopefully reading it one day. With your talent, you’ll be published at some point for SURE! 🤞🏼🤞🏼

I was listening to Taylor’s new album the other day, and of course I thought of you. 😆 Are you liking it? There are a handful of songs I REALLY like. I haven’t listened to every song in its entirety yet, but the ones I have are pretty good. The Albatross, The Black Dog, Fortnight, The Manuscript, Guilty As Sin, and TTPD really stand out to me. It’s a damn good record.

Take care of you, darling. Love you. 😘

hi shells! i’ve been okay! thanks for checking in. very busy between working and (though not anymore) editing, but it’s all good. how are you? it looks like is impeding on everybody’s tumblr time. it’s so sweet of you to stay updated on me! i wish i had more interesting things occurring.

books are going swell! i’ve submitted suicide blonde to a few agents, but im toying with the idea of holding onto it a little longer and maybe revisiting it in a little bit. part of me wants to be established in my career so that i can do that entire series justice. i feel like the publishing industry, for debut authors, is so strict and narrow and im having second thoughts on how i condensed things for publication. HOWEVER! things are going great with my new book. it’s almost guaranteed to fit within publishing guidelines even with the most fleshed out story, prose, characters, and relationships imaginable, so i’m very happy there. it’s also right up my alley while also being a bit more “adult” and closer to a domestic drama than anything i’ve ever worked on. this plus the religious themes have become kinda my niche, so i’m chugging along. i can only hope that i can go somewhere with it (or anything) one day.

i have listened to it! i distance myself from most of the fanbase (not you, ashley, if ur reading this) because it’s quite frankly so toxic sometimes, but i’ve always loved her music and always will. i like the album a lot! it’s a lot to digest, but guilty as sin is my fave track (nobody is surprised). i also really enjoy the prophecy, but daddy i love him, so long london, down bad, cassandra, the bolter, and fresh out the slammer. oh, also i can do it with a broken heart because the chorus is so relatable.

i hope all is going well on your end!! i’m all good over here 😌

#mwah !! #shells tag #✉︎ — confessions.

[holofoiltowercard]

The Journey of The Tarot Haiku

V: The Hierophant - Doing it my way

That title speaks more to the reversed Hierophant, who was actually the star of the show at one time during the process of preparing my manuscript for publication, so I decided to dedicate this post to that funny anecdote, but I also wanted to talk about how it fits into my life in general.

Ever since I was little, I have been doing things differently. My mom once told me, "After two kids, I thought I knew what to expect. You blew that out of the water." After two fairly normal siblings, my family found me somewhat incomprehensible, but because I was really good at drawing, soaked up any English I heard like a sponge and did well in school, it was put down as a case of having a quirky genius on their hands. Looking back, I would not call myself that, and I don't really wish the curse of being considered gifted on any child: it really messes with everyone's expectations, including your own. Whenever I fell short, I was devastated. But I never did stop, because as it turned out, my way of perceiving the world and interacting with it was simply different from other people's, and I followed what my inner compass told me was the right direction. Sometimes it worked out, sometimes it didn't, but live and learn.

I always loved creative projects, and spent over twenty years doodling compulsively, and writing the odd poem here and there. I wanted to write books, and even now when I ask myself, what do you wish you could do with your life, my answer is that I would love to write stories and share them - despite that, for the longest time, writing simply didn't happen, and I actually started earnestly, and in English, in my late twenties. I had my confidence in my storytelling shattered a few times in the course of my life, and because I could draw, everyone was encouraging that, but to me drawing was partly a way to keep my hands busy; the only way I could pay attention at school was drawing in textbooks and notebooks (needless to say my teachers kind of hated that). As I got more comfortable with writing, I stopped drawing as much, and now I rarely do unless I'm asked or I'm engaging with a project where I need to draw - such as this book.

Once I started writing the poems in earnest, I could tell that they had the potential of becoming a book, and I got very excited. It could have been a more standard poetry book that features only text, but I was more ambitious than that. I love a good illustration, so I made illustrations after my own vision, but above all, as soon as I thought of the layout you have to physically turn about to reverse the card in the middle and reveal the poem attached to it, I knew I had to go with that. I only learned in the last stages of preparing my manuscript that what I devised was called "ergodic literature", and felt really glad that I had a proper expression to describe what I had done.

In the layout I was confident; in the process of self-publishing, not so much. I actually consulted the Tarot a lot once I made up my mind to publish. I asked what dates I ought to aim for as the publication date; I asked what I could expect if I published here or there; and as I was preparing the document with Kindle Create, I kept asking the cards if it was going to go well in its current state. I was starting to get reversed cards, and got so frantic I actually went to consult guide books to suss out the meaning better. It was in this state that, for the paperback, I drew a new card, and got The Hierophant reversed. Again, I was already kind of jittery and unfocused, and went to the guidebook... which basically said, "Stop asking others for approval and just trust yourself."

It was hilarious. I laughed heartily, and I submitted.

A day later the paperback version was rejected... because of the upside down text. Turns out Kindle Direct Publishing does not allow that in print, even if it is ergodic literature. The support person I emailed was very kind and apologetic, but there it was: having upside down text in print was unconventional and here it was not allowed. I thought back to The Hierophant reversed, and laughed again at how perfectly it captured the whole situation.

I ended up reformatting the book for paperback, so the ergodic layout disappeared, and each card was featured twice in order to show off the reversed cards under their respective poems. I am a visual thinker, and I also think it's just neater to see the cards actually in reverse position, and being able to ponder the poem and the imagery at the same time. Again, I've never come across a guide book in my studies that showed off the reversed card when discussing its reversed meaning, so I wanted to have it for my book. I guess here is where the upright Hierophant comes in: in the process of capturing the meanings in succinct little poems and attaching illustrations to them, I realized that the book could be used as a practical guide for beginners, and from there on I made a commitment to that. I'm glad that the ebook was allowed to retain its layout, because I really loved it, and this way it does feel more like a volume of poetry and the homage I had meant it to be, and at the same time I'm happy with the paperback and hardcover versions being more accessible, even if the reformatting sort of bloated the page count (bringing it from 113 pages to 190). I sincerely hope that anyone new to Tarot will find it insightful and fun.

Buy the ebook

Buy the paperback

Buy the hardcover

#tarot #tarot cards #the hierophant #poetry #haiku #the tarot haiku journey

[literaticat]

I don't particularly like selling on proposal. For my fourth book, my agent says we aren't going to submit anything to my editor until fall. If I write an entire manuscript by then, can we submit that? Or will my agent still have me do a proposal (I assume because it's faster for my editor to review/easier to take to higher ups) even if the manuscript is finished?

My love, you know that this is YOUR book, YOUR career, and your agent wants (or SHOULD want) to do what's best for YOU... right?

Now here, I'm assuming that when you say you don't like selling on proposal, you mean, "I don't like selling a book that isn't done, because then I feel pressure in a weird way about finishing it, and I'd just rather know the whole thing is done and is just what I want it to be before I sell it"*** -- which is FAIR ENOUGH, to be honest!

So if you know that about yourself, just have a conversation with your agent about that. It doesn't have to be dramatic -- just, "Hey, I really don't like selling on proposal, it makes me feel [some kind of way], I'd prefer to wait until I have a full ms. I'll aim for that by Fall." And if you finish the ms (or get it close enough that you are comfortable, anyway), great. And if you don't, your agent can wait to send it. If your agent/editor would rather just have a short sample and synopsis to "take to the team" just because it's faster, that's fine, you can give them the first couple chapters and whip together a synopsis or outline or whatever, but you'll know that the ms is actually done, your agent and editor will both know that the ms is actually done, and that will be one less thing for you to worry about, and you'll be able to get to the editorial stage much more quickly.

COUNTERPOINT: I don't know you or your sitch, obviously. But it has to be said: There is a POSSIBILITY that your editor won't WANT the manuscript you just spent months writing, or that their team won't go for it, or whatever. This is one part of "selling on proposal" that is good -- if the editor or publisher doesn't want the book, or wants it but in a different way, you haven't just invested months and months of effort writing the whole darn thing, so it's much easier to pivot. Your agent, knowing this, might feel like, hey, wouldn't it be nice to know this and get it sorted out BEFORE You write the whole thing? Which, hey, I can also feel that, it's a reasonable position (and indeed, that's why many writers WANT to sell on proposal when they can!)

COUNTERPOINT TO THE COUNTERPOINT: OK, but if the editor doesn't want this book, and it's REALLY the book of your heart, you don't WANT to change it dramatically or write something different entirely, then it's better to have a full ms, because then if the editor turns it down, it will be easier to try and sell elsewhere. I generally only go out on proposal when an author has a relationship with that editor (OR they are extremely well-published, great track record, "famous", etc). If you've only ever worked with one publisher and aren't established like that, it will be easier to sell to somebody else if you have a full.

Anyway, these are all points for you to ponder, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having a discussion with your agent, being candid about your preferences, etc. Maybe they will have compelling reasons for you to do it "their way" that I don't know (because your situation is known by them and not by me!) -- so, you know, having the conversation is great -- but ultimately, you and your agent are PARTNERS, and you are the deciding partner.*****

--

*** (umm if you have some OTHER reason why, or this isn't what you mean at all, then IDK!)

***** (Some people say, "YOUR AGENT WORKS FOR YOU" -- but I don't like the implication that you are your agent's boss, any more than I like your agent being YOUR boss -- neither of you is the BOSS, you are both working TOGETHER for mutual benefit! That said, your agent is your fiduciary and is acting on your behalf, which means they can give you their best advice and wisdom, but ultimately, they shouldn't be doing things in your name that you don't want them to do!)

[indiaalphawhiskey]

India, hi. Do you write books for profit? I am curious, you have the potential and even more so that you have that well experienced in writing for profit type of skills. Have I read them? Can I read them? 👀

Hi, love! ❤️

I don’t write professionally, no. Right now it’s just fics! But it’s certainly been a goal of mine for a long time to take the leap and submit a manuscript somewhere. I’m hoping I get the guts this year! 🤞🏼

(Thank you for the compliment! And, if I ever do get published, tumblr will be the first to know! 😘)

#iaw ask #iaw anonymous

[aftergloom]

If the aim is publishing, then getting on a first-name basis with rejection is part of the deal. The rejection is not necessarily an assessment of your value as a writer, only the work itself not being a good fit for that market or agent at that moment.

With workshops, it's a little different, because they look at where you're coming from and what your experience is, and where you're going. Being rejected for a workshop that takes the strongest possible candidates with the best possible fit for the group and its mediators, so in a way it feels like you're on the right track even if this year isn't your year. You can always try again.

However.

I think the process of submitting to a writing workshop is worse in a lot of ways, because the first step is acknowledging that if you're good enough to get in, they are going to smash you like a teacup on concrete and put you back together with molten gold, but fuck if that process isn't going to be rough.

I think the fear of being accepted is so much greater than the fear of rejection at this point because you know that you're going to subject yourself to the process for six weeks or more. And maybe that's the key indicator of being "ready" or not. If your ego can't take it, then it's not time yet.

So I sat there chomping on how "ready" I felt, and it's not the critique that I flinch from, it's the seventy hours of work every week and being worried that I won't be able to produce anything even remotely worth workshopping under duress.

Which is literally the stupidest thought I have ever had, because I had to remind myself I've been doing exactly that under a time limit for a year on top of grinding on a three hundred fifty thousand word, fully-plotted manuscript.

So the tl;dr of this is that my short-term memory is shot and because of that, I am a knot of stress trying to distract myself with Animal Crossing in excess.

#delete later #writeblr #Clarion's extended window closed yesterday you see #and I've got ten days to put together my submission for Odyssey #everything is fine.

[pynkhues]

Hello! I just saw the ask where you said you have an agent and i have always wondered like, how do you go from having to do everything by yourself to having an agent? Like where do you look for one and how do you know is a good fit?? P.s. i find your input from the biz so interesting!

Hey! Thank you for your kind words, anon!

How you land an agent is really pretty dependent on what your artform is, and even in some cases where you live (the American system for instance is a bit different to the Australian one), but overall, there are quite a few pathways that can get you in the room with one.

My pathway's actually pretty traditional and generally considered the sort of 'old school' approach to getting agent-representation. I started submitting short stories to journals and magazines in 2011, and had the absolute beginner's luck of having the first one I ever submit accepted for publication in a journal, haha (I was 20 at the time). The next few years made for a lot of rejections and a few acceptances, and as I was writing and submitting those, I was also writing a novel manuscript which was never and will never be published (Stephen King has a famous quote where he says that your first novel is really you learning how to write a novel, which I very much agree with), and then started writing my second one.

With my second novel manuscript, I started submitting to development opportunities and got invited to a writer's residency in Western Australia before winning a Fellowship to further develop both the manuscript and my broader professional practice. I applied to do the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in America, was accepted, and used the money from the Fellowship to develop it while I was over there. Around this time, I started getting invited to submit to agents and I submit to two who were both very nice, but one felt I didn't write in a style she could sell at the time (there's a particular Australian voice which is very hyper masculine which my writing is not, and it's what was popular at the time), and another who said she loved my writing style but not the projects I was interested in writing (she wanted me to try more commercial women's literature, which I don't mind reading but isn't really what I write).

So I went to America, did the workshop, came back, finished my novel, submit it to a prize which it was shortlisted for, but didn't win, so I bottom drawered it, wrote another novel manuscript which was shortlisted for a different prize, also didn't win, but was invited to be submit to the senior editor with a view to maybe being published. I did, then that editor left the industry and my manuscript got lost at the publishing house (it happens), and so I went back to focusing on short stories for a while. I had a bunch published, went to a conference, pitched a bunch of different projects to an agent, but she wanted one I hadn't (and still haven't, haha) finished, so I kind of blew that.

Meanwhile, another major publishing competition came up where the prize was a publishing contract with Penguin Random House Australia, and so I dusted off my manuscript, did a round of edits on that, submit it and got shortlisted again, only this time I also won!

When I won, I had a lot of agents reach out to me again asking me to submit work (including one of the ones who'd already read my manuscript and didn't like it, haha), and I took meetings with all of them, contemplated doing it without an agent at all (which you can do in Australia, but not in many other countries), but then ended up going with a woman I'd already known for a while in a different capacity (I used to work at a writer's festival and I'd met her a few times through there). She was really excited not just about my book that was already signed, but about three of my other projects - one in particular that I'm currently writing - and she talked me through the contracts with PRH and international rights in a way that I understood, which was also important to me.

That was back in 2020 that I signed with her, and she's helped with the international sale of my book (it's actually having a very small print run in the UK and US this year which is wildly exciting because they're very hard markets for international authors to break into), and she's otherwise trying to keep me on track with my next novel right now, haha.

So yeah, my pathway's a long one but also a pretty traditional one. Writers though can go through pitching sessions at festivals, cold submissions, referrals from other authors, be approached off the back of great articles or short stories, or even off social media profile (I've heard some industry horror stories about some of these though), so it really does depend. My understanding is that it's kind of same-but-different for people in other artforms, but the main point I think is that the agent has to believe in your work, or at least believe that they can sell your work.

#this is pretty rambly anon haha #but yeah #it's a journey #as silly as that can sometimes sound #industry stuff #welcome to my ama #rl