Obstacles to being published

Characteristically sensible post here from Rachelle Gardner. There's nothing I haven't said myself, but it's all succinctly phrased and, especially if you are new to the approaching-publishers-and-agents lark, useful.

There are two points that I thought I'd elaborate on:


Pitching several books in different genres. Why not? Because although you can have a wide writing career later, you need to

CHECKLIST FOR GETTING PUBLISHED

I believe that if you can say yes to all of these, you give yourself more chance of being published. Unfortunately, I can't guarantee that doing all of them will get you published, because that depends on what you have written, how well you have written it and whether a publisher believes he can make a success of it. And magic fairy dust.

[This is an updated version of an old post, something

DELUDED COVERING LETTERS

I am re-posting this earlier post to help those of you approaching covering letters / queries for the first time. Many of you, I know, are old hands at this, but there are new writers coming along all the time and terrible mistakes are being made. I want to save you, honestly!

The covering letter will give an agent or editor the first clues (and they may not look further) that either a) you may

WALK LIKE AN EDITOR (AND AGENT)

One skill that authors need to learn is the ability to see into the minds of the editors and agents who will read their proposals. (Another skill is the ability to understand sales and marketing departments, but I'm afraid this skill eludes me. There are some lovely people in them but their minds are beautiful mysteries.)

Since I am neither an editor or an agent, I bring you the words of some

PARTY INVITATION

Even though I'm in a really bad mood for many reasons and completely fed up with the snow, I am generously inviting you all to my first birthday party. Yes, on Sunday 10th Jan, this blog will be One Year Old!

I was reading some of the first posts just now, and remembering how I felt getting my very first comments, and how extraordinarily quickly so many of you found me. Echo Freer and Tom Vowler

THE RIGHT BOOK...

Here I am, keeping my promise to you. I know: I've regularly said that the process of becoming published is simple [not "easy", note: "simple"]. I've said it so many times that some of you are in danger of suffering adage-fatigue. But let's say it one more time, all together now:
"All you have to do is write the right book in the right way and send it to the right publisher at the right time and

FAILURE TO BE PUBLISHED: HARSH REALITY

This may seem lazy but I'm going to re-post an old post. This blog has become so big that it can be hard to find the bits you need at the right time. [I will be doing some house-keeping over Christmas]. This post below is one I want to re-offer, partly because many of you are new to the blog and may have missed it, partly because I know there's at least one person out there who needs to be

WRITE FOR READERS

I have always believed that we should write for readers, if we want to be published. Actually, no, I haven't always believed that: I used to believe I should write for myself. But then I realised that it was this selfishness, this solipsism, this narcissism, that was stopping me becoming published for all those horrible years. Now, I have absolutely no problem marrying the twin aims of writing

A PERFECT SCENE THROUGH DIRTY WINDOWS

I read an interesting blog post by one of you  -  Catherine Hughes, guest blogging on the Strictly Writing blog. [Well done, Catherine!] And it got me thinking.

Catherine's right: despite constant advice from me and many others to get your covering letter+synopsis+sample perfect before sending it to an agent or publisher, perfection is not always actually necessary. In other words,a beautiful

KILLING YOUR DARLINGS - SELF-EDITING FOR SOFTIES

One of my favourite writerly activities is editing my own work. Which is lucky, because it's also the most useful. It's also the skill that I know I've developed considerably since becoming published  -  I am much better at knowing much earlier what needs to go and how to rearrange what's left. I am becoming rather embarrassingly good at killing my babies. When they're misbehaving, anyway:

A TRUE STORY OF A STRUGGLING WRITER

Recently, a commenter who calls herself "Beleaguered Author" and blogs as "Beleaguered Squirrel" (are you sympathising already??), told us this story. Italics in square brackets are my comments. Colours are my usual flamboyance:
"I'm in what I think is an unusual situation. My first book was published by a small-but-respected publisher who subsequently ceased trading. [Gah.] My second book was -

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

Although you're reading this on October 1st, I'm writing it on September 26th , and I've just read this in today's Guardian. You can read it if you like but the point relevant to my post is that today (Oct 1st), 800 new titles will be launched. In the UK alone.

Now, this is obviously more than on most days, for reasons that aren't relevant to my point but which the article nicely explains. My

BIG MISTAKE 3: OVER-WRITING

Thing about writers is we're passionate about words. (If you're not, bugger off, please).

Trouble with being passionate about words is we sometimes don't know when to rein in our passion. I admit that I'm guilty of this quite often. There are people in my life who do their best to stop me, and very grateful I am to them.

They are, in no particular order:
my husband - "Shut up: you're banging

HOW TO MAKE A PUBLISHER SAY YES

This evening, in the Edinburgh Book Fest, I'm doing my talk on "how to make a publisher say yes". And I decided to put the bare bones of it below, or at least to try to decipher my notes and then turn them into something that will make sense to you.I've done the apparently same talk for four years now, but each time I say it differently. Each time, I guess I've learnt more in the meantime. Each

IS THIS WHY YOUR MS WAS REJECTED?

A lazy post today but why expend energy when someone else has done the work? (But please note: that is NOT an excuse for plagiarism, because there is no excuse for that. Plagiarism is copying or stealing and passing off as your own writing. Linking to other blogs is right and proper.)Take a trip here and see if any of these reaons could apply to you.

IS YOUR WRITING HOT ENOUGH TO LIGHT FIRES?

I read this Very Useful Post on agent Rachelle Gardner's blog last month and now is the time to draw it to your attention if you didn't read it at the time. It gives a wonderful insight into the mind of an agent and what mental processes they must go through before saying yes to your magnus opus.I believe that if you fully understand this, it will do two things for you:help you when you are

BIG MISTAKE 2: PROBLEMS WITH PACE

I promised that I would soon hit you with a post which would improve your writing. Big Mistake 1, you'll doubtless remember, was back in February, when I talked about making mistakes with voice. This Big Mistake "series" aims to point you towards the commonest mistakes in otherwise decent manuscripts, the things that so often stop them pressing the necessary ecstasy buttons for an editor or