Tag Archives: writer’s motivation

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ROW80 Check-In 10: Rae Carson’s success story

Hello gentle reader and fellow writers,

This week I have been hearing a lot about a British teenage writer who got a 6-figure book deal in less than 2 years. As dreamlike as these publishing stories are, I wanted to highlight another author’s story today.

Rae Carson is a YA High Fantasy author whose first book, The Girl of Fire and Thorns, came out in 2011. It was a nominee for the Andre Norton Award and the William C. Morris YA Debut Award. It was also an ALA (American Library Association) Top 10 Best Fiction for Young Adults honoree in 2012. The second book in The Fire and Thorns Trilogy, entitled The Crown of Embers, is coming out on September 18th 2012. Her third book, The Bitter Kingdom, will be published in 2013. In June 2012, she sold a new romantic fantasy trilogy set during the American gold rush to HarperCollins’s Greenwillow Books.

 

Rae’s journey into publishing is interesting because it was slow. She became serious about writing back in 2004, and it took her 7 years to get a book published. Along the way she sold a couple of short stories, wrote a first book which is still in her drawer, then in 2005 she wrote the first draft of The Girl of Fire and Thorns. She got an agent, and never sold the novel to a publisher. So she revised it and decided to go with another agent, who managed to sell the book within 24 hours. It took then another couple of years to have the book sitting on bookshelves in bookstores.

Here is what Rae says on her website:

“I graduated college with a degree in Social Science–which qualified me to flip burgers–and a mound of education debt. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up.

Well, that’s not true. I did know. I wanted to be a novelist. But that just wasn’t practical, and I had to come up with something else. I had to have a Plan B. So I tried bank tellering, secretarial work, customer service, inside sales, substitute teaching, data entry, logistics, and even machine shop-ing. I didn’t enjoy any of it.

In 2004, after quitting a very high paying job in a very toxic atmosphere, I decided to get serious about writing. It was the only thing I kept coming back to, the one thing that had held my interest over time and distance and lots of life change. So I joined the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror where I met my future best friends, my future husband, and my calling.

I spent the next few years happily writing awful stuff. During this time, I got to know C.C. Finlay online, and after going on three real-life dates, I moved from California to Ohio to marry him. The writing became a lot less awful, and eventually I sold my first novel to Greenwillow/HarperCollins.

Hindsight is easy, I know, and writing about the awkwardness of adolescence is way easier than living it. But I can say unequivocally that although growing up is hard, it’s totally worth it. It’s possible to become your better self. And dreams, no matter how impractical, are made to be pursued.”

So do you find this story inspirational? Do you believe the traditional route to publishing is too slow? Or does it guarantee great books from great authors for readers? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comment section!

You can find Rae Carson on Twitter and Facebook.

To write this post, I have used:

http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2012/07/rae-carson-amulet-of-power/

http://shelf-life.ew.com/2012/09/13/fire-and-thorns-author-rae-carson/

My ROW80 update for this week:

this week I have tried writing a short story AND revising my WIP The Last Queen. The reuslt is that I have a unfinished short story and I’m late in my revisions. So for the last week of this round, I need to focus on revisions.

How are you other ROWers doing? Here is the Linky to support each other!

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ROW Check-In 8: Elizabeth May on Writerly Misconceptions

Hello gentle reader,

so I had a tough week. I was jet-lagged and I was having doubts about this whole “let’s get my book published” thing. So I didn’t write. Instead, I read great books and decided to postpone my writing until next week. And I found a post by debut author Elizabeth May. She posted it her blog on November 22d, 2011. Since then she has sold her YA steampunk novel THE FALCONER and it will be released in May 2013.

Here is her post:

Writerly Misconceptions: YES, YES, YOU DO WORK

Basically, I’ve come to understand that aside from the other things I have to do (that dissertation to finish, that photography business to run, that teaching anthropology thing I do), I have to write sometime.

Have to.  Because, while it might have been a hobby before, writing is now one of my jobs.  I have a trilogy to plan.  A sequel I should probably be writing as I type up this blog…  I am doing things!  Important things!  My heroine is a mess and I have to FIX HER.

So when I take a day and sit on my ass in front of the computer for hours, that’s not me being lazy.  That’s me bringing home the bacon.

The other day I asked Mr. May to do some task that I really can’t recall right now because I’m only on my third cup of coffee.

His response?  ”Wait, weren’t you home all day?”

Subtext?  ”You totally could have done this thing because while I was out working, you were sitting at home.”

It’s a totally innocent comment.  He’s right.  I was home all day.  I made two pots of coffee, clicked around on mah laptop, answered a few business e-mails, worked a bit on my dissertation write up that my supervisor is demanding — and oh yeah! I wrote some of that sequel.

Now, before anyone judges Mr. May (remember that I love him and he is not a writer), he totally didn’t mean this to sound dismissive of my work.  He is voicing a very common misconception about writers.  That writing a book is easy work* and that because most of us work from home, we are ”lucky” not to have to “go to work.”

Basically, that we are less busy because writing is dependent upon the rules and hours authors set for themselves.  If we all had offices away from the home, perhaps this misconception wouldn’t exist.  But because we prefer comfortable spaces (homes or coffee shops or cafes, or my favourite place of all, the couch) it’s perceived as, essentially, laziness.  Because I could be cleaning instead of typing.  I could be doing something active.  I could be going out to run errands.  Instead, I’m being sedentary.**  Some people believe writing is not a “real job” for all of these reasons.

Because this is my significant other, I had to set this straight.  I said, “Assume that whenever I’m staying home for the day, it is my designated ‘work on book’ day. It is not my ‘clean ALL THE THINGS’ day.”

And maybe, if I finish a chapter and feel like cleaning, I will clean.  But not before!

Mr. May, of course, apologized.  Because when people make comments like this, they don’t generally realize they’re speaking from this socially engrained idea that “work” equals “being active,” or that a “real job” requires “leaving the nest, staying out from 9-5.”***

So I’m clarifying this right here, right now.  Writing is work.  Writing is a job.  Writing is not for lazy people.  We don’t write because it’s easy.  That is not why we sit in front of a laptop or a blank sheet of paper for hours.  That is not why we spend years writing practice books that no one will ever read.  That is not why we spend all that time querying and getting rejections.  And that is certainly not why we write book after book.

Because we’re lazy?  No.  It’s because we’re compelled to.  It’s in our nature.  That is the only explanation for spending years writing unpublishable, crappy manuscripts to get to that point where our work is good enough to put out into the world.

So if you’ll excuse me, I will continue to sit on my couch and work.  Because this is how books are made.”

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* Has anyone heard this? “I could write a book if I wanted!”

**  I’m being sedentary because I’m writing a damn book.

*** I’ve also heard the phrase used in reference to “non-career-like jobs” — the conceptualization of “real jobs” is limited to a few vocations, and let’s face it, it’s a shitty thing to tell anyone.  Right along the lines of “write a ‘real’ book” or “read a ‘real’ book.

How are you other fellow ROWers doing? You can visit them here.

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ROW80 Check-In 7: What I learned at WriteOnCon

Hello gentle reader,

this week my writing schedule was completely thrown off, thanks to WriteOnCon.

On Friday I did a recap of the online writers conference WriteOnCon and today I thought I could go over a few things I learned during this crazy week. YA writer Aimee L. Salter already wrote a great blog post on this topic and I suggest you read it since she really made the most of the conference (she received six full manuscript requests and a direct referral to an editor!). I was less dedicated than her to fully take advantage of the conference (I only spent a few hours a day in front of the computer) but I did learn a few things worth sharing if you ever want to get published traditionally …

1)      Write an awesome book first.

Having a successful author platform and thousands of followers won’t do any good unless you have a great book to sell. Ultimately, agents and editors want an amazing book that will blow them away. The author platform and the followers will only be the “icing on the cake”.

2)       It’s a crowded world out there.

I read dozens of awesome queries on the WriteOnCon forums. These writers are going to get published, I have no doubt about it. And instead of being depressed by the prospect of having to “compete” with all those great writers, I found that reading their work on the forums  was motivating. Because now I know what agents getting my query will compare it with. I know I have to be as good as all those talented writers out there.

3)      A query has to make your book stand out.

Before WriteOnCon, my query was ok. I had sent it to 5 agents and got 2 partial requests. I hadn’t committed any of the Deadly Sins of Querying. My query was professional and brief. It included the agents’ names, the title of my MS, genre and word count, and a brief summary of the plot/main characters issues. But having an average query is not enough to get published. A query has to be outstanding. I learned that I had to make every word of my query count to make it unique and to really hook my reader.

4)      Don’t rush.

You should never send a query or a manuscript that is not ready and in the best possible shape. But getting your query/MS ready and in the best possible shape takes time. And it’s OK. Take a year to polish your MS. Take two! Revise, revise, revise. If your book is really unique and awesome, it will get published regardless of trends and external influences.

5)      Seek help and feedback.

I have said it before on this blog, but WriteOnCon confirmed my thoughts: you can’t do this alone. You cannot get your MS ready and awesome without people giving you feedback on it.

6)      Listen to the advice of professionals.

They are the ones who will read your query and hopefully buy your book and turn you into the next J.K. Rowling. Listen to what they have to say. Read their blogs, watch their vlogs and seek their advice. Be professional. They are.

7)      Trust your instinct.

A conference such as WriteOnCon is a great way to get advice. TONS of advice. And by the end of the day, you’ll notice contradictions. Don’t mention world-building in your query. Mention some elements of world building in your query. Don’t say you’re planning on writing a book series. Let people know you’ve devised your book as the first installment in a series. Don’t start your novel with a dream/prologue/MC running. It’s ok to start your novel with a dream/ prologue/MC running as long as it’s essential to the story. A YA novel shouldn’t be longer than 75K. No, 80K. No, 100K.  Actually 115K is ok in some cases. The next YA trend is edgy contemporary. No, it’s historical novels… You get the point. If you listen to everyone in the profession, you end up pulling your hair out.

So, at the end of the day, trust yourself. Make your book as awesome as possible and believe in it.

YOU CAN DO THIS.

To check out other fellow ROWers, click here.