How to Get Published: Ready, Set, Whoa! (Part I of III)...Continued from page 1

It took me five.

What I didn’t realize was that no matter how talented a writer is, every first draft is bad.  Usually very, very bad – and mine was no exception.  In her excellent Bird by Bird book about the writer’s life, Anne Lamott calls them “sh*&y" first drafts,” and as any good writer knows, they truly are.  But for some reason, we writers tend to have blinders – big ones – when it comes to our work.  We want to get to center stage as fast as possible.  And, we tend to believe, rather naively, that writing is something which can be mastered easily and quickly.  Just look at those concert pianists!  They make it look so easy!  As Rita Mae Brown says, however, “It takes as long to learn writing skills as it does to become a neurosurgeon.” 

This, I have learned, is an understatement.

I know how disheartening this learning period can be for writers.  After all, I was there myself, not too long ago.  But consider this: Your book must compete with the 200,000 others published each year, of which a mere 1 percent sell more than 5,000 copies.  A full 98 percent of all books published each year, in fact, sell less than 1,000 copies.  So even if you could get published now, is this really what you want to put out there?

To be a success, your writing simply cannot be mediocre.  It has to be phenomenal.  Not only that, but when it comes to wowing an agent, you’ve got one shot, and one shot only.  Do you really want to take yours now?

Maybe you do.  You’ve work-shopped that manuscript (or book proposal) to death.  You’ve rewritten your book, again and again.  You’ve put in the time, and you know you can’t make it any better.  It’s ready to go and it’s very, very good – or so say all the non-relatives and unpaid friends who’ve critiqued it. 

Well, if that’s your case, darlin’, then congratulations for sticking it out.  I’m just as proud as peat, and I can’t wait to read that book.  So please skip to Part III of this article and go find yourself an agent.

For everyone else – especially those just getting started – I invite you to pull up a chair and pour yourself some sweet tea.  Sweet tea is good.  But experience is better.  And if there’s anything we Southern Girls like to do, it’s share our experience and hand out advice – especially if we can save someone a little heartache.

So here’s my take, for what it’s worth, on what you really need to produce a manuscript that will wow a good agent:  

Read lots of books about the craft of writing.  You can get them online, from the library or a book club.  I joined the Writer’s Digest Book Club and, thanks to their generous “buy four get one free” policy, now own a small collection of writing books that I refer to again and again.  These were not only great fun to read, but they also fueled my writing, giving me lots of creative inspiration.