so you want to be a writer?

Whenever I think about the writing process and all the drafting, and the querying, and the fact that only one agent in five will maybe take on two new writers a year, I get a little disappointed.  Because I'm a writer, I don't have a very good grasp on the quality of my work.  I think it's swell, but that's because I'm writing about what I like.  My plot in Fate?  Crazy black holes everywhere.  The characters in Strange?  Pretty flat.  Realism in Element?  Well, lets just say the pregnancies were a little quick.  So I do realise I am not a great writer, and while I do work on my craft (every. single. day.) I also realise that even if I can work myself into being a fabulous writer, I have ultimately a 99.7% chance of never being read.  Even in this world of Kindles and other e-readers, when you writer YA Fantasy, you're in the lowest of the low.  Well, maybe not lowest of the low, but definitely in the bracket which implies low success rate.  Yeowch.

That said, I also like to think that someday masses of crazed fans who back-read blogs will be reading this and commenting things like "you were sure wrong!" or "writing is a really difficult process, but I'm glad you made it" or "you're so whiny" or "how do you feel about strawberries?"

My writing process plan is as follows:

1.)  Write initial draft.
2.)  Put aside for at least a month.
3.)  Edit initial draft to pieces.
4.)  Rewrite.
5.)  Resist editing again and print out three copies of the manuscript to give to volunteers to edit.
6.)  Rewrite.
7.)  Put aside for at least a month.
8.)  Edit personally
9.)  Rewrite.
10.)  Resist editing again and print out three copies of the manuscript to give to three different volunteers to edit.
11.)  Rewrite.
12.)  Put aside for at least a month.
13.)  Make any small, remaining changes.
14.)  Research agents and discover at least 25 who will currently accept YA Fantasy (if there's that many even out there anymore).
15.)  Query agents 5 at a time, waiting about two months inbetween query letter sets.
16.)  If all are rejected - and they will likely be - put the manuscript aside.  Maybe pick up in a couple years, re-edit, and post as an e-book.  And print one copy for me.

Yeah, hopelessly optimistic plan, right?  But, fact of the matter is, there's a lot more to writing a book than writing a story.  I feel like I have to be pessimistic, because otherwise, rejection will be terrible.  All a writer really needs is one person to read their book... and as long as there's one person out there somewhere who wants to read my stories, then I'm happy.

However, I'm still going to go through my game plan.

the slush pile

In a recent entry, Nathan Bransford (San Francisco agent extraordinaire) wrote about something called the "slush pile".  Essentially, he explained that this "is a repository of hopes and dreams for the authors who populate it, and a Herculean and Sisyphean task for those charged with making the pile go away to make way for the deluge still to come. The slush is full of half-baked ideas, the truly out-there, the very occasional undiscovered gems, but mostly good-solid efforts by perfectly respectable writers, who are up against simple math that simply isn't in their favor: maybe one in a thousand, if that, make it from slush pile to publication with a major publisher, and the odds are getting steeper by the day."  The image I get in my head of that is like a pile of dusty gemstones, lost and forgotten by a dragon who (rightfully) found himself interested in something bigger and shinier.

As I read his entry (which mostly touches on the expansion of e-books and equal-opportunity-publishing-thanks-to-things-like-Kindle), I found myself missing the point entirely and straying to think... I have my own "slush pile".  It's certainly smaller than the one Bransford is talking about; perhaps it would be more just to call it a "slush puddle".  It's the place where all the good ideas go.  There are plots with no characters, characters with no story, old first chapters, half-written stories, short stories I'm not fond of... all these things that will never probably see light again.  There are so many good ideas in the world that there is no way everything can be recognized.  So we writers - like agents, editors, and publishers - only pluck the biggest, reddest apples from the trees.  A lot gets lost in translation, for better or worse (usually better).

The writing world is still hard, though.  Even if you've picked your reddest apple and given it to the trickiest hag to deliver, that doesn't mean Snow White is going to want to eat it.  This week, she may be partial to kiwis.  Even people with great manuscripts and amazing agents (and I would never, ever try to publish without an agent, but that's my personal belief) may never get published, and that's the way the world works.

Even outside of being a writer, working in that industry is difficult.  It's all about the people you know.  Bransford has written a blog entry on this, too, and he says that pretty much the only way to get in is to know someone already there, or if you're lucky enough to get an unpaid internship... count your blessings.  I just did a search of agencies and I personally would have to move to New York City to even have close enough access to one.  Publishing companies?  I'd have to go to Boston.  Since I live in New Hampshire and currently work in corporate retail, there is no way I could afford to go to either of those cities and live on an unpaid internship.  Yikes.  So what then?

Then, we cut corners.  Maybe we dream of editing fantasy YA, but the closest thing we've got is a travel magazine, and that's still an hour's drive for an unpaid internship.  Still, it's better than Boston or New York (with all the love in my heart), so that's what next summer will look like for me, with a little bit of luck.  I don't want to be a person thrown into a slush pile... shiny, but not shiny enough.

Meanwhile, keep rubbing elbows with the people that you know.  Because they may make all the difference.

P.S. If you don't follow Nathan Bransford's blog and you want to be a writer... do it.