How to Get Published: Ready, Set, Whoa! (Part I of III)

"How can I get an agent?” 

It’s the question every writer wants to know – the one posed most frequently at book-signings, and the one readers always email me about.  It’s an important one, too.  After all, you can’t get a book published without one.  Not really.

For most writers, however, trying to find an agent is a bit like asking how to get an audition at Carnegie Hall.

Years before my book, The Southern Girl’s Guide to Surviving the Newlywed Years: How to Stay Sane Once You’ve Caught Your Man, went to "auction," with three major publishing houses bidding for the rights – and long before it snagged a USA Best Books Award, I dreamed of being a writer.  I had been the editor of my high school newspaper.  During college and graduate school, I wrote short stories and essays, in exchange for As and paragraphs of professorial praise.  A wisecracking Australian prof even wrote that I had made him cry with “The Curate,” a short story I wrote about a young pastor who accepts a call to St. Michael’s Church in Charleston, where he discovers a viper’s nest in their historic monogrammed pews.

I was in seminary at the time. And unfortunately, I knew of what I wrote.  But that’s the first rule you should follow when trying to get published: “Write what you know.”

I’d also practiced international law in Switzerland, working for the United Nations and as corporate counsel for an American bank, during which I freelanced and honed my writing skills.  And I read everything I possibly could on the craft – at least 50 books about dialogue, narrative, plot, voice and style, to name just a few.

Of course, I didn’t think I was Pat Conroy or anything.  Far from it – he intimidated the heck out of me, in fact.  But I figured I could at least write a book and get it published.  How hard could it be? 

Well, a lot harder than I ever imagined – although not nearly as difficult as what came later (and not even remotely as challenging as losing weight…so hang in there, y’all – it’s all possible). 

To start, I knew I needed discipline.  So I taped a sign above my desk that said, “Writers Write.”  I placed fans throughout our dingy Atlanta walk-up and prayed that my computer wouldn’t blow up from the heat.  And then I wrote – five nights a week, from 9 to 11 p.m., and all day Saturday.  Week after week after week.  I even wrote on vacation.

Two years later, I called my husband into my home office as I typed those greatly anticipated words, “The End.”  I was thrilled.  And I figured I’d have an agent within a few months – a year at the most.