I finally finished my novel. It was like waking up from one of those long convoluted deep sleep dreams where you are chased by a pack of complete strangers through some semi-familiar landscape with no end in sight, and for purposes you are never quite sure of - but there you are, hoping everything turns out okay. It was both fun and exciting. It was a "stick-to-it challenge that at times made me wonder why I ever started in the first place, but made me feel obligated to the story line and the characters to finish. In fact, there were times when I couldn't sleep because the story and the cast had me in its grip. I will always be happy that I stuck it out and finished the task which ended up to be a 346 page book. It was a three year project of actual serious writing, but in reality if you include the tooling up thoughts and notes and starts and stops and re-writes and goofing off, it was really a 5 year project. I don't know how the big-time genre writers pump out novels so fast. Probably by constant practice - and because I've spent a lot of time on airplanes and in hotels reading genre novels, I've seen a pattern to the plots and story lines. That's okay, it works just fine.
So there it was - this big pile of paper full of words lying on my little writing table and now the real work began. Trying to find a publisher.
I went to the internet and spent several weeks researching agents and publishers who dealt in fiction. There are tons of them and most reside in New York. I also spent plenty of time researching the recommended methods of submitting a manuscript for consideration. Thankfully, the net provides not only lists of publishers and agents, but also advises which publishers and agents are accepting proposals and what they expect to see in terms of proposal packages. Essentially, a writer is told to send a query letter (a cover letter asking to please, please, please, please - consider this manuscript for the following reasons.....). I had an acquaintance - another writer who was enrolled in the local literary center, paying vast sums to get an inside ticket to writing and publishing, who advised me in the art of query letters. There is, it seems, a method involved. It's a method manufactured by the publishing gods in which we earthbound writers must pound the drums and dance the dance under murky skies, and sacrifice time and money and crops and children and whatever else is lying about the house, in hopes of being chosen by the gods to have our little manuscript picked for publication.
It's like a TV reality contest show. Dancing With The Stars or American Idol or Celebrity Apprentice (without the celebrities) or The Great Race or Survivors.
The publishing and book marketing guru, whose seminar I attended, had some depressing statistics which I can't exactly remember, listing the number of manuscripts submitted and the number actually chosen in a year's time. It was shocking. I said "Wow. The postal service is cleaning up!"
Still, I joined the club and fired off a hundred or so letters, resumes, reasons to read, selected competitors, the first three chapters - or selected "best representative" chapters and a couple dozen complete manuscripts. The folks at the post office got to know me on a first-name basis.
The results were pretty much as expected. Even though I enclosed return addressed stamped envelopes, only a fraction of them were sent back to me - raising the opinion that as the guru said, many submissions get dumped without being read. How about that?
I tried a second round of submissions with the same results. Now I'll say right here that I totally understand I'm no Hemingway. No Steven King. No Tom Robins. I'm just a guy who wrote a book, so that's what it is. I do believe it's worth a read however - so what did I say (after 8 or 10 months of shuckin' & jivin'?) I said "Hey, screw this. I need product, not process. I'm gonna publish this thing myself!"
I repeated the self publishing phenomenon for the second time (recall if you will, the "A Few Last Words" eulogy book episode) and sadly, but predictably, I repeated the editing screw ups and the premature launch of a wildly flawed copy. Really bad, was the fact that I handed out several copies of this disaster. Most people stopped reading it after the first chapter. Several others stopped talking to me entirely. How embarrassing is that? Very. But here's the deal. The good news is that my dear wife finally tied me to a door knob and demanded that I find a professional editor. The excellent news is that there is a professional editor lurking right here in our extended family and my wife asked her if she might take a look at my copy. She said yes. I heard her gasps of astonishment all the way from Sheboygan, Wisconsin to Minneapolis when she opened the pages. A month later, Jeri Dale, my new editor, returned the copy to me with so many little pencil marks and corrections that I had to go for a walk with the dog to clear my mind. Now, a month later,I'm approaching the last chapters of correction and feel super nifty about what I will resubmit to the electronic book maker.
I have learned a bunch of good stuff in the process and will have a wonderful little book to add to my collection. Cool!
As always, comments, remarks, conversation is encouraged.
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