#trying to get published

[kathryn-writes]

So I completed a novel. It sits at 110k words and was a labor of love and felt so good to watch it come to fruition!

But then you find out how much the novel is just step one if you, like me, decide you want to give it a go and see if you can get yourself published.

I will say this off the bat, you can do all the research you want (and you should!) but that probably won't be enough to get you ready for the gauntlet that you are going to walk. First, I should say that I have an amazing support network. This includes a therapist, a supportive spouse, and my mom who is my biggest fan. To top it off, I've been in the same fandom since the onset of the pandemic, and have made some extremely close and supportive friends through that. Combine that with having a decent day job and it's a pretty good place to be to try.

I found some amazing resources (namely https://www.reddit.com/PubTips - it's so good. I highly recommend!) that explain where to go and what the process is. In the US, if you have a novel you want to publish traditionally, you can go to Query Tracker and look up literary agents that represent your genre who are also currently open to unsolicited queries. Then you write yourself a query (ie a short but enticing pitch, usually less than 350 words, about your book) to get an agent interested. They'll often also ask for a synopsis (breakdown of the whole plot), sometimes a pitch (a single sentence), the first many pages/chapters of the book, and finally what books that are comparable to yours.

Then you send these out to some number of agents, likely a large number of agents, because they're all getting inundated with over a hundred of these queries a week, and you cross your fingers and hope... and wait.

And then you brace for the rejections. Most of the time they're form letters but there are times that they give feedback.

I think all I want to say about this is build up your resilience. It doesn't matter who you are, you are going to get a whole bunch of "no's." If the agents are kind enough to leave you with feedback, take it. In my case, it has not even been a month yet since I submitted to agents. I got a bit of feedback which has indicated that I have not hooked people into the world I wrote early enough, so I turned to those magnificent fanfic friends to ask them for advice on how I could make the hook dig in faster. (Sometimes those things are hard for authors to see - we live in our worlds and can sometimes be tunnel visioned.)

I have a few regrets. Not about querying this work, not at all! But I wish I had asked people completely unconnected to the story if they could read the first chapter or two and tell me if they felt connected to the world. I wish I had sent my query to be critiqued by reddit (I'm telling you, /r/PubTips is incredible). I wish I had broken my queries into smaller batches, so if a few agents got back with the same criticism, I could hone that first before sending to more.

This is also a process that requires patience, a thing I do not have enough of! I'm grateful that financially, not getting a rapid book deal (or traditional deal at all) is not going to impact me. I want my writing out there and I still think about how amazing it would be to get to write all day! But this whole process takes time. And it takes luck. I could have the perfect query and still strike out, and I could have a mediocre query but an agent who connects with the story. It's subjective and it's a craps shoot.

So I guess that other than writing about my experience, I also wanted to give a few nuggets I'm picking up as I go.

Get critical beta readers especially for the first few chapters!

Use the non-agent resources available, like /r/PubTips for your query!

Send your query out to a LOT of agents, you never know who is going to connect with it. But, it's best to do it in smaller batches in case you get feedback that you can use to improve!

Be patient! It takes time. Find friends who will give it love if you need some whilst waiting (ps THANK YOU to my wonderful friends for giving it love whilst I am waiting!)

And you're going to get a lot of no's. That's okay! It's even okay to be salty and to grumble about it. But don't give up.

Rejection hurts, and it's okay for you to feel it! But you are resilient, you will bounce back, you will persist.

And if you want to beta read a story about a girl who meets a dragon and watches her whole world turn upside down, then please feel free to reach out!

[flavoracle]

Hey all, I’m actively looking for a literary agent. I don’t know if anyone here knows someone or has any recommendations, but I’m trying to cast as wide a net as possible, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask.

Any suggestions?

[inkskinned]

my father told me he read it, but he hasn't read it. that's okay. my friends keep picking the words out of my throat.

someone once told me that the more trigger warnings that go on a book, the better it is. i didn't mean to write something with so many conditional phrases - i was writing about what i felt while being a human. sometimes you are a person and sometimes you are a statistic. sometimes it is falling upwards and sometimes it's sliding back down again.

my father tells me that it will be difficult to get people to read it. i didn't like the idea of a singular genre. i'm not going to lie to you - it is actually a difficult book to get through. i change the rules in it. it's not poetry or prose explicitly. it's neither false nor reality. i give you the tools to "solve" the book, but i let you do the thinking. my father says people don't care to think. i don't know about that - i think we just, like, enjoy reading.

the thing is - i was tired of stories about survival where someone with depression goes to therapy and wakes up okay. i didn't live like that. i was tired of books about violence, where the gore of what i experience was splashed in glitter to lick off the page. like, i was a person, you know? i had a life and a job and a family. and in books, i watched my story get ripped up so people could explore the viscera of my body. so they could feel good. my brother once called it inspiration pornography. we had walked out of a suicide-prevention seminar, both of us disgusted while the increasingly-elated presenter kept listing methods-of. i remember the look on my brother's face. like i would tear that man apart given the right time and place.

my father says that kids these days. he warns me against writing about things that are too-serious. he says that they don't want it. i don't listen. he does make me take out a scene from the book where i go to church after having sex with a woman. it used to be the 7th scene in the book. i don't think he's read further than that, it rocked him too hard to continue.

it's a book about being queer. it's a book about being raised catholic. it doesn't have monsterfucking, i'm sorry. it's just about, like.

at some point you have to choose to stay here. and then you do have to stay here, which takes practice. this is about forming the habit. this is about what happens after you've already started doing the work. because, like. you keep going. you have to. and it's like. very imperfect.

i should make a post on instagram. i should make this announcement less bittersweet. but like -- i'm giving it you, specifically, because i think you know why i had to write it. you and me. this little community.

body's a bad monster. here's the link if you're interested in ordering.

[fluttershiesworld]

[ID: text reading:

Frequently Asked Questions:

How did you become like this? How was your childhood? Do your loved ones find you constantly grating? "Your clinician may ask to talk to family or loved ones to get complete information on the ways that your symptoms are [affecting] you. "Did you know you can lead a normal and fulfilling life? Did you know no one will ever truly love you? Do you know what compassion feels like? Do you care? How does anyone deal with you? How should I talk to you? Wow, you seem so different from everyone else who fits this arbitrary group of symptoms that I vaguely know. Why are you different? Are you special? Are you stupid? Are you human? Are you cursed? Are you monstrous? Are you possessed? Are you made of metal? Is rust eating you from the inside out? Are you a real boy? Are you a real girl? Are you raw meat? Are you beautiful? Are you an angel corrupted by pride upon seeing the shape of god? Are you an abstract painting? How can I make you what I want you to be in my singular narrative? end ID]

frequently asked questions, sunny valentine

[tippenfunkaport]

That viral post that's going around about how people who write "book quality" mlm fic are too "normal" to publish and have real jobs so only "weird" people publish their "shitty" fanfic is so completely out of touch with reality and I am giving a massive side eye to everyone reblogging it.

Not only is it completely, easily verifiably untrue (you cannot enter any professional writing space without tripping over a dozen grizzled scifi writers who got their start by filing off the serial numbers and publishing their Star Trek fanfic even going back decades ago??? it's a whole thing?? plus how can you look at the mlm category on Amazon right now and say with a straight face that people aren't publishing shitty Spirk and Stucky fanfic??? Oh, honey...) it's also the perfect example of this kind of sneering elitism that true artists would never sully themselves by seeking profit, they do it only for the purity of the thing that always somehow leads back to, "no one should be paid to make art, actually."

The only reason you're seeing more published fanfic right now has nothing to do with the idealistic purity of your hypothetical government employee written smut of the past vs the debased scribbles of those awful straights of today and everything to do with the fact that a) self-publishing has created a voracious readership that wants a ton of content so it's become a viable, flexible income stream for many, especially disabled people b) anyone can publish now with self-publishing tools so there are less gatekeepers and c) lockdown got a lot of people into fandom and therefore writing who never tried it before.

And if you really think there's no "shitty" published mlm and no "book-quality" m/f writing out there that started as fanfic, then you are clearly not a reader so why are you even talking about this?

[leonardcohenofficial]

likes to charge my abstract getting accepted so i can write this chapter for a new collection about bob dylan that i submitted to on a complete whim

[solitaireships]

I feel like I should say since there's been a recent uptick in a lot of communities I'm in/see stuff from a lot of white people pretending to be Asian, but you are not welcome here if you are in anyway stealing from Asian cultures for clout or the aesthetics of it

This includes if you're white and you give your self inserts Asian names, I truly do not care if your f/o is from an anime, you should not be using an Asian name under any circumstances. I hate that whenever I see someone using an Asian name online, I feel like I have to start searching their account to see if they're actually Asian or just a white person who likes the aesthetic of it bcs far too many white people will use Asian names here just bcs it sounds cool, with no regard for the actual cultural meaning behind it. Meanwhile actual Asian people will be mocked for their names, or treated like their names are too hard to learn to pronounce, or discriminated against based on their names

Asian cultures are not a fun little costume for people to dress up with. They aren't just a nice aesthetic, they aren't just a thing you can borrow from bcs you think it sounds cool

[canisalbus]

Trying to imagine if the Pope in Machette's universe is, like, a Pomeranian, and thus shrinks down to a fraction of his original size when wet. Like it rains and everyone is like 'oh, Your Holiness. Oh no'

.

[lizisodd]

If Band of Brothers did a coming home episode like The Pacific, which characters would you want to see adjusting to civilian life, and what storylines would they have? Let's assume Winters and Nixon would get a good chunk of the episode, so choose some other ones.

[thelonelyshore-if]

How would each ro act after the first morning after waking up next to mc?

I was so thoroughly obsessed with this prompt that I just kept writing as I was working on Beck's answer. And then I realized I wanted to just like...write drabbles for each of the ROs. So I'm going to do that. Sorry that it isn't all at once, Nonnie, but I love this prompt and wanted to really write something out for each. I hope you still enjoy! <3

Beck- drabble here!

Croft- drabble here!

Jay- wip

Perri- wip

Ravi- wip

Yasmin- wip

[toastedclownery]

"I don't miss twice"

Uh oh?

[ihopethemoonislistening]

[stuckinapril]

me stoically navigating my way through drama bc bigger things are ahead and it’s not my fault people are dumb

[boviform]

Okay, sorry but is anyone else going insane over the new longform on the latest Patreon livestream?? I absolutely love the dynamic of weird mortician and lonely assassin - literally 'me and the bad bitch I pulled by being autistic'. And the whole confrontation at the end!! I mean, can you imagine what could've been if Pyotr had agreed to give up his ways?? They could have been so happy! I want them to go on holiday around Europe and hold hands!!

[thegirlhoodtheory]

st. winston of the jugular, 4/7/24

[painted-bees]

Help my family. War is devastating. There is nothing left to live. No schools, no universities, no home, and no dreams. All dreams have been shattered. I hope for help before it is too

okee lads, this one appears to have been vetted no. 176 on this verified fundraisers sheet. They've currently raised 25k euros of the 37k they need, so if you've got some currency burning a hole in your pocket, here's a very helpful place for it:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/dydb36-gaza-palestine

Since we're here, please take a look a the other fundraisers on that spreadsheet as well. Many voices are crying out and I know it's been going on for a while but we can't allow ourselves to relegate it into becoming a background white noise. Please help all those you can; peace finds you in the act of doing so.