012-What I’ve Learned-Part Two
“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… it’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless.” – Harper Lee
As promised, I’m back with the second half of my list of things I’ve learned in the year since joining the writing community. The first half touched on actually sitting down and writing, from making the time to write to letting your draft sit, and realizing your first draft may look like garbage but having the patience to find the reward in editing. With this second half of the list, I’m going to get more subjective—and social. Plus a bonus at the end. Off we go:
6. Beta readers are key
I intend to make this its own blog post at some point because it’s a maddening, enriching, frightening blast. And it’s one-hundred percent required.
You slogged through that miserable pit of editing once for errors, twice for structure, three times for clarity. Your story now looks much closer to what you believed it to be when you actually completed your first draft. It’s downright ready for public consumption, right? Well, sort of. I believe four people have read my novel thus far. It’s terrifying to have someone criticize a work you put years into, easily hundreds if not a thousand hours into. And yet my story could not be where it is now without others reading it. Correct my errors, tell me what you liked and didn’t like, and in a few cases, toss me a wild twist that I should have added since day one. So, number six—find yourself beta readers. More on this someday.
7. Social media is work
I know; you don’t want to read that. Shouldn’t make that much sense, and yet somehow it does. Or at least, if it still doesn’t make sense, the people that matter when it comes to your marketing don’t care what you think, because they’re the ones telling you your social media matters. Excited your family, a few friends, and a coworker are going to read your book? Great, good luck making anyone else aware of it. Now, I’m not saying you need to be on numerous platforms. Quite the opposite, but you need to be active on the two or three you’re on. There are some cheap ways to gain followers which I scoff at, hoping for a slightly slower, more organic build and engagement. However, I have recently learned the need to communicate with people out there, and for better or worse, as I get closer to releasing this novel, that need is likely to increase.
There are two very distinct sides to the social media coin.
8. The #WritingCommunity is incredible!
Again, here’s the payoff. I mention this in my blog about self-investment. Utilizing hashtags like #writingcommunity, #amwriting, or #amquerying opens doors to a network of creators. Have questions? You can (usually) get them answered. Want to share in others’ successes? Hell yeah! Support another new author’s work? Absolutely. The online writing community, particularly through Instagram and Twitter has been a frigging joy to connect with thus far, and I look forward to doing it more often.
9. Querying should be taken seriously, but not personally.
Twitter and Instagram are also great for helping with your query research, which I’ve had the joy(?) of beginning in the last week. Querying, and I’m sure there will be plenty of posts about this in the future, is submitting your manuscript to agents and publishers. It is a process that currently seems to have bogged down its recipients, my thoughts being the result of both self-publishing and a pandemic that forced many to remain home, left to their own devices and thoughts. Now that my manuscript has been edited approximately half a dozen times, including changes made after beta readers, I’ve begun the deep dive into querying, thus far seeking agents via QueryTracker. Agents will typically let you know what they’re looking for in a submission. If not, their Twitter (typically included on their QueryTracker page) or a Manuscript Wish List page (MSWL for short), which you guessed it—details what they’re seeking—helps you determine who may be a good fit. Despite all of this, rejections will be plenty more bountiful than a request for more, and the main thing I continue to see is that it’s not based on the merit of the work—your manuscript is simply not a good fit at the time. Keep submitting and keep submitting. A really nice option in this day and age is your ability to self-publish, so your book can see the light of day. And if you’re concerned about anyone reading it without an agent, publishing company, etc., welp—that’s where number seven comes back into play.
10. You’re doing this for a reason.
It’s strange. And let’s go back to my first blog post, released as I first launched this website a year ago. It’s there where you can reintroduce yourself to Sam the Pelican. I wrote three stories before the age of ten, the last of which was probably over one-hundred pages handwritten. Now I sit here querying agents for the first time at forty-two years old. I have multiple works-in-progress, some I started a dozen years ago and still fully believe in and intend to finish. I’ve spent years working on my current novel out for submission, and while I have little to no expectations, I’m fully aware that the sky is my limit (yours too, for that matter). So why? Why bother? It’s an honest question, one that may be concerning to some, yet I’m smiling as I ask it of myself. Sure, creating can be meditative. Swinging around on the jungle gym in my mind feels like playtime occasionally. But truly? There’s something powerful and cathartic in creating, an absolute beauty in being able to convey a set of thoughts so excruciatingly detailed as to be an entire story that I can transmit from my brain through my fingers onto this screen, to your eyes half a world away where your brain conjures up the picture I had in it years prior. If those thoughts, if those words, if that picture that forms in your mind makes you smile, laugh, fearful, or cry with any of my characters...
...My God, that’s not just art or entertainment. It’s fucking telepathy. It’s magic.
Thank you so much for reading. Cheers to the start of the second year. And for the first time, I utter the name of a title I’ve never uttered in public. I hope to see THE GHOST OF TIME FORGOTTEN on a few bookshelves by the time this page reaches its second anniversary!
