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Publishers have Writer Phobia

Apr 23, 2012 | 9:05 AM

So you want to write a book? Nothing to it – and usually nothing for it. But that's another matter.

First, you need to choose a genre and then you need a plot and believable characters. You have to think about those characters in such detail that you know more about them than you do about your mother. Some writers say the characters tell them where the plot should go next. Sometimes I worry about those writers.

About characters: do NOT, under any circumstances whatsoever, include someone you know, as a character in your book. Don't even give the stunningly beautiful heroine or the stunningly handsome hero who is tall, incredibly handsome and has wide shoulder and narrow hips, the name of someone you know.

Of course, if you don't care that no one you know ever speaks to you again, including the person you used and the jealous person whom you didn't use, go ahead and get sued. It is raw material for your next book.

The plot. All you have to do is write the very plot the editor, (keeper of the slush pile), happens to want at the precise moment yours arrives on his/her desk. Don't forget that most editors won't even open the envelope if you don't have an agent and getting an agent is right up there with getting a shot at going to Heaven, and , only slightly better, (but not much), of winning 649.

On the other hand, I know half a dozen first time authors I have met at a writers club in Saskatoon, who have landed contracts recently from small – but what the heck: they publish – publishers. Avoid Vanity Publishers which print your book for a cost, but you have to sell them yourself. Forget bookstores. A couple of hundred books in the back seat mark you as A Writer though.

Harden your heart. Stephen King and Mark Twain had dozens and dozens of rejections before someone woke up. Cheer up. The editor who rejected the Harry Potter books is probably floating in the Thames.

The problem most of us face is that a manuscript can only be sent to one publisher at a time and you may wait up to six months for your rejection slip – unless you have an agent who can disappoint you immediately. Remember King and Twain. Rejection slips make fine paper airplanes for the grandchildren too.

But, there are a zillion small publishers, many of whom are seriously looking for new writers, agent or not. There are several very successful – and hungry – publishers right here in Saskatchewan. Hunt publishers down in books such as The Canadian Writers Guide or the Writers Handbook, both of which are in the library. Ebook publishers are a great market.

Go to a conference like the Surrey International Writers Conference, held in July each year. There are well known authors there such as Diana Gabaldon, Anne Perry, Jack Whyte, publishers, editors and agents, any of whom you can set up an interview time of 15 minutes. They will fill you in on the other fifty things you have to do. The SiWC usually has a web page starting in June or July telling who, what and when.

Diana Gabaldon kept me from spilling my soup in the buffet line there one year. It made me feel like a real writer.

Now that you are terribly depressed, just write because you love it and worry about publishing some other time – like when you have written, rewritten, rewritten, tossed it against the wall, put it in the garbage can (then retrieved it I hope) and clutched it to your heart and said, “I wrote this!”

Back it up, back it up, back it up! Heck, go back up your car. Just make certain sure every word you have written is saved in TWO places – one of which is not on your computer. I have a manuscript that took two years to write, now in cyber space. I backed it up with hard copy to do the editing, but that box must have blown off the truck or maybe it was snapped up by a really famous publishing house whose editor picked it up, sheet by sheet, along the White Star Road.
It could happen….