No, I’m not talking about self-publishing here. I’ll leave that for another post. Instead, I’ll describe a process that’s worked for me. Both my first novel Absolution and my upcoming second novel A Stone for Bread were submitted to their publishers without an agent. The Absolution manuscript was entered into the Novello Festival Press…
In my last post I talked about the value of an agent. Now here’s the grim reality: the odds for an unknown, unpublished novelist obtaining a literary agent is estimated to be something like 1 in 10,000. Some say 1 in 20,000. So why bother? Well, here’s what may increase a new novelist’s chances: –prior publication, such as…
The first time I submitted a novel manuscript to an agent, I received a phone call a few weeks later, and heard the thrilling words, “I would like to represent you.” Wow, I thought, I’m on my way! Except that I wasn’t. Although that manuscript received positive attention from several New York publishers, it…
I once critiqued a fictional story based on the writer’s own life experiences. When I noted that his dialogue didn’t sound authentic to me, he replied, “But that’s what we really said.” I’m sure that was correct. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that what someone actually said works effectively in fiction. Replicated everyday speech in…
“If you are going to be a writer there is nothing I can say to stop you; if you’re not going to be a writer nothing I can say will help you. What you really need at the beginning is somebody to let you know that the effort is real.” James Baldwin I…
“Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” — Gene Fowler, journalist and biographer It always comes back to the chair. Okay, you’ve done your research, created your outline or filled a notebook with ideas, detailed your main characters complete…
Writing is a tough business. Gratification (publishing) can be long in coming. If and when it does, royalties are usually insufficient to live on, sometimes even nonexistent, especially when averaged over the months or years and costs it’s taken to finish a manuscript and get it accepted for publication. Once published, we have to…
My Uncle Grattan, my father’s oldest brother, was a brilliant man. He spent a couple of years in New York City in his twenties studying art before he returned to his native South Carolina. He then lived out the remainder of his life on the coast at Murrell’s Inlet, and for many of those years…
But isn’t it really about personal fulfillment? If you’re a struggling writer, you’ve probably had someone say this to you. In my long and frustrating journey to publication, I heard this a number of times, usually from friends who meant to encourage me. And, yes, there have been moments when I’ve asked myself the same…
Recently, the New York Times Book Review featured two writers asked to comment on the question, “Do critics make good novelists?” I wasn’t particularly interested in the question but was struck by two passages from novels cited by one of the responders. Both passages describe fictional characters named Daisy. In The Great Gatsby, the first view…