Getting published - a first timer's guide to the galaxy + the writing process

Tips and pointers gleaned from the recent Sydney Writer’s Festival 18 -23 May 2010

'It’s exceedingly rare to go from literary oblivion to an overnight literary sensation.'

The Budding Author
So you’ve written your book?
Now it’s time to find an agent to promote it, a publisher to publish it, or better still, both. A caution – be prepared to put in the hard yards, a publisher will not do them for you. Apparently some publishers prefer agents to act as their professional contact/intermediary with the potential author.

“We all have a book in us” but it would appear that that’s where it will stay unless
you’re prepared to write justfor the joy of writing. Don’t even consider going down the writing track until you’re 100% sure that you’ve done your homework.
• Know your market, or at least be confident that you can generate a sizeable market for your manuscript.
• Know exactly what type of books potential agents and publishers have in their stable of books already on the market.

The total package is both the writer, and his words and he needs to succeed as both
Not surprisingly one pre requisite for success would appear to be (based on the speakers at the Writers Festival) a half-way decent, well grounded and disciplined writing background. Practice leads to a more perfect outcome.
If you want a hope in hell of being published you need to write for an already predetermined public as classified by the demographic and genre your manuscript fits.

Off-loading your manuscript
Before dumping your manuscript on an agent or publisher’s doorstep check either via their website or by calling their office, if they are currently accepting submissions.
This will save time and the disappointment of yet another rejection letter.
You’ll need to dazzle a publisher or an agent with your wit, media savvy and mass audience appeal (ability to capture the attention of your potential fan base). Prove that you have the nous to be able to make money, and to continue to make it….to turn your smile, and your articulate self, into cold hard cash, and be prepared to run the gauntlet of the “speakers” circuit and all other contacts and circuits relevant to the content of your book. You become the trinity: the writer, the seller, the promoter.
You must be willing, and able to ceaselessly self promote, and once published, become everyone’s property. Your potential ‘fan’ base will determine if your book heads to the stratosphere or sits on a bottom shelf gathering dust. Your public will dictate just where your book will go next. So get it out there.

The writing process

Keep a pen and paper handy. You never know when and where inspiration will strike.

This is where the long hard road begins.…… You’ll have an innate sense of where you think its going, but you’ll change direction several times before hitting pay dirt.
Whatever the motivating factor the desire to eventually see your manuscript in print must be behind your decision to go for it.

Caution – know your intended genre and stick within its publishing framework and parameters.

The subject of your manuscript will most likely be the result of an ‘awakening’. Could be a first of the morning inspiration, a dream from the night before, a plot that’s been brewing for what seems like forever, one of life’s multilayered experiences,or an observation that is begging to take wing. For non fiction writers the ‘call’ is most likely the result of years of extensive in-depth research that you want and need to give a voice to.

Checkpoints
• Don’t think too long and hard about the direction you want to take the text.
• Don’t stew over words, tense, grammar and punctuation. Just write
• Don’t panic if there’s a gaping hole in your manuscript or a chapter you just can’t seem to get your head around. Leave it alone and come back to it when you’re in the ‘write’ space. It will eventually right itself.

My as yet unpublished children’s manuscript went to an agent minus the pivotal(since completed) ‘climax’ scene. It wasn’t so much a case of “writer’s block” as a case of this writer’s procrastination.

Is your manuscript fiction or non fiction, romance, murder –mystery, children’s book etc.? Does your manuscript have the potential to sit comfortably as an e-book?
Some genres are more suited to the electronic media than others.
Perhaps that isn’t your initial intention, but remember that’s what your soon to be ‘public’ could be looking for.

Engage emotionally with and get up close and personal to your characters, plot, theme, and story line. Sometimes a character’s personality doesn’t evolve until the manuscript is nearing completion. For those writing non-fiction, make sure that the facts are accurate and can be verified at source.

Feel free to self edit throughout the writing process. Early on establish a buddies Co-op. Not of your nearest and dearest, but of those who are prepared to be objectively cruel to be kind. A group of friends, fellow writers, and enthusiastic readers who will pass constructive judgment on your manuscript. After each ruthless dissection be open to making changes, changes and more changes.

Remember, at this stage your manuscript is still very much an ‘open’ book.