#but trust me it's agonizing to have the game stuck in the stage its stuck in

[nighttimepixels]

Hi Night!!! I hope you're doing well, and how is the game progress going so far? Not to stress you out or anything, sorry- Take your time please, we're not rushing you.

Haha, I am extremely stressed about it!! (⊙ヮ⊙|||) 

‘Tired Night is tired, and is also better at plotting/game dev than she was when she started making it last year, and is now in a gordian knot’ is basically the summary of where I am at, hooray...

I’m still hoping to finish it, but I’m also getting better at... all kinds of things in the meantime, making YMHaT a steadily increasing Catch 22 of time sinking. But most of the game art’s been done for ages, so... I definitely am not inclined to abandon it either.

I’m also just shaking my fist at Last Year Me for choices I now know better than to make in the dev process that have made Current Me’s life a bit of a living hell to finish it, sigh.

Slowly but surely. =v=b

[nanowrimo]

The 3 Stages of Traditional Publishing

Are you finding yourself caught up in transition time between being a hopeful writer and a published author? Today, author and NaNoWriMo participant Katya de Becerra offers insight on what it’s like to put your novel through the publishing process:

So you’re finally done with your manuscript… What’s next?

Finally finishing your manuscript could be daunting. Is the book good enough? What to do next? All authors, emerging and established, are faced with these questions.

When I finished writing what became my debut, What The Woods Keep, I only had a vague idea about what I should be doing next. I’ve heard about critique partners, but I’ve never had one. My creative process is individualistic, and I require total isolation to think and write, so it was unnerving to reach out to friends and ask them to be my first readers. 

I’m glad I did! Receiving insightful comments aside, friends reading my work (and loving it) gave me an enormous confidence boost that propelled me toward the next step: finding an agent.  

1. The Query

Querying agents can be soul-crushing. Curating agent lists as well as carefully researching each agent I approached, meant that each query I’ve sent out was tailored and targeted. It also meant it’s taken me a long time to prepare and email each query. I could only do 2-3 a day, and 10 was the most queries I’d have out at any given time. Though time-consuming, this process worked for me, allowing me to receive feedback from each “batch” of agents before I’d approach new ones. Being rejected based on query alone meant the pitch needed revising while rejections based on pages indicated there could be something to tweak in the manuscript itself. Though, in the end, it’s important to keep in mind that the subjective element is strong in publishing. “You only need one yes” sounds like a cliché but it’s true. In the end, all it took was one agent’s interest and, before I knew it, I had representation for my weird, genre-bending book.       

2. Submission

Depending on how editorial an agent is, a manuscript could go through one or many rounds of revision before it’s deemed ready for publishers. 

The only advice here is to trust your agent. They chose to represent you – this means they believe in you and your work. Even if you don’t hear from them with regular updates, agents are working tirelessly, hyping your work. I had to wait for about eight months before I had an offer for my first book! But it was absolutely worth the wait. My publisher and editor are perfect for me and the types of books I write and want to keep writing.

3. The Waiting Game

Here’s where the real nail-biter starts: the waiting! Some books sell quickly. Some take months—or more—to find its home. Being ��on sub” is a surreal time of being stuck in limbo and trying to go about your regular life while nervously checking your inbox or staring wistfully at your phone. My second book, Oasis (forthcoming in January 2020) was a NaNoWriMo novel! I’d written it while I was on submission with my first book, and it sold alongside my debut. At the time of writing Oasis, I wasn’t sure what was to become of it and was seriously considering self-publishing it during those 8 agonizing months that I was waiting for my debut to sell.

While my pathway to publication is rather traditional, it’s not the only way to be published. Indie publishing has grown and evolved so much over the years. It allows creators to take full control of their books and become their own publisher. So many traditionally published authors these days become “hybrids” combining different modes of publication. There’s no right or wrong way, but rather a way that’s right for you and allows you to achieve what you set out to achieve.  

Katya de Becerra was born in Russia, studied in California, lived in Peru, and then stayed in Australia long enough to become a local. She was going to be an Egyptologist when she grew up, but instead she earned a PhD in Anthropology and now works as a university lecturer and a researcher. Her genre-bending debut What The Woods Keep was published in 2018 and her second novel Oasis is forthcoming in January 2020. 

Top photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash.