By Lacey Gunter
If there is one thing I could express to help a new writer starting on their journey toward getting published, it would be the value of patience. Despite how little patience exists in this breakneck-paced world we live in, you won't survive the publishing journey without it.
We can never assume our readers will have patience. Many will drop you after a single chapter if you haven't already wooed them into staying. Or maybe just after the title and front cover, if you are a picture book writer like me. We can't expect agents or editors to have patience. I have heard no small number of them claim they typically dump manuscripts after a single paragraph. Not to mention the worse reality when they refuse to even consider a manuscript due to a less than super sparkly query letter. And we certainly can't expect a publishing company to have patience. Most of them won't even give your manuscript space in a super long slush pile without the official credentials of an agent, even if that slush pile is only virtual.
But guess what folks; all of those people are expecting a boatload of patience from you.
First of all, you've got to be patient with your manuscript. Finishing the book is just the first small hurdle, because you're not really finished. Next comes chapter/book critiques, which you better be patient in waiting for or your critique partners will pulverize both your ego and spirit into the ground as they rip apart your manuscript. It's worth the patience it takes for them to figure out nice ways to say their piece. Then you have to patiently consider all the helpful and sometimes not so helpful feedback; followed by a lot more patience with yourself as you work toward sincere improvements to your manuscript.
Once you finally get to the point where it seems like your manuscript might actually be ready to start sending out to the world of agents, here comes another big waiting game. First, you wait weeks and months for silence. Then if you've taken the time to search out agents who actually respond, you can wait weeks and months for form rejections letters. Once you've been patient enough to learn how to write a good query letter and actually get a chapter or book in front of an agent, you get the opportunity to wait weeks and months for personalized rejections, and boy won't your be happy about that. If you've been patient enough to decipher the meaning out of the personalized rejection and taken the time to fix up both your query letter and manuscript one day you might get to experience the joy of landing an agent.
But don't get too excited yet, because most agents still want you to do some pretty significant edits, which you must patiently consider and work on. Then comes the lovely submission dance you just went through all over again, only this time it's your agent doing the dancing while you patiently wait in the background. So fun! Finally you might get a book contract. Woohoo, end of waiting, right? Nope, here comes lots more editing, and lots more waiting, probably two years of it. All of this of course is assuming that manuscript you wrote is good enough to publish. For most people, their first manuscript is not. So then you have to start all over.
It may sound overwhelming and depressing. Sometimes it is. But if you truly possess the patience to see the process through, especially if you have the stamina to do it more than once and learn along the way, you have a much greater chance of success. Just be patient.
If there is one thing I could express to help a new writer starting on their journey toward getting published, it would be the value of patience. Despite how little patience exists in this breakneck-paced world we live in, you won't survive the publishing journey without it.
We can never assume our readers will have patience. Many will drop you after a single chapter if you haven't already wooed them into staying. Or maybe just after the title and front cover, if you are a picture book writer like me. We can't expect agents or editors to have patience. I have heard no small number of them claim they typically dump manuscripts after a single paragraph. Not to mention the worse reality when they refuse to even consider a manuscript due to a less than super sparkly query letter. And we certainly can't expect a publishing company to have patience. Most of them won't even give your manuscript space in a super long slush pile without the official credentials of an agent, even if that slush pile is only virtual.
But guess what folks; all of those people are expecting a boatload of patience from you.
First of all, you've got to be patient with your manuscript. Finishing the book is just the first small hurdle, because you're not really finished. Next comes chapter/book critiques, which you better be patient in waiting for or your critique partners will pulverize both your ego and spirit into the ground as they rip apart your manuscript. It's worth the patience it takes for them to figure out nice ways to say their piece. Then you have to patiently consider all the helpful and sometimes not so helpful feedback; followed by a lot more patience with yourself as you work toward sincere improvements to your manuscript.
Once you finally get to the point where it seems like your manuscript might actually be ready to start sending out to the world of agents, here comes another big waiting game. First, you wait weeks and months for silence. Then if you've taken the time to search out agents who actually respond, you can wait weeks and months for form rejections letters. Once you've been patient enough to learn how to write a good query letter and actually get a chapter or book in front of an agent, you get the opportunity to wait weeks and months for personalized rejections, and boy won't your be happy about that. If you've been patient enough to decipher the meaning out of the personalized rejection and taken the time to fix up both your query letter and manuscript one day you might get to experience the joy of landing an agent.
But don't get too excited yet, because most agents still want you to do some pretty significant edits, which you must patiently consider and work on. Then comes the lovely submission dance you just went through all over again, only this time it's your agent doing the dancing while you patiently wait in the background. So fun! Finally you might get a book contract. Woohoo, end of waiting, right? Nope, here comes lots more editing, and lots more waiting, probably two years of it. All of this of course is assuming that manuscript you wrote is good enough to publish. For most people, their first manuscript is not. So then you have to start all over.
It may sound overwhelming and depressing. Sometimes it is. But if you truly possess the patience to see the process through, especially if you have the stamina to do it more than once and learn along the way, you have a much greater chance of success. Just be patient.
Patience is something I have more of the older I get
ReplyDeleteI would add that you need more patience than just the patience of waiting... there's also patience with yourself for not being perfect--you didn't write a perfect manuscript; you aren't good at waiting; you hate editing... if you don't accept that you're not a professional author, YET, (or even when you are) that you have faults, then writing will become the thing that sucks all that is good from your life, and you will stop doing it (and then be miserable because you ARE a writer, and it doesn't feel right to not write).
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