There’s always been a part of me that believed I could actually write a novel. I mean, honestly, writing as often as I do I’d have to just get to an ending eventually. The writing process for me was completely haphazard and without a written plan.
Plot? Not exactly.
Characters? Some at the beginning… many along the way.
Setting? It is in a world… indeed.
It was so exciting though experiencing the world through my characters. Their voices carried the narrative and their actions dictated the direction. Could it be better? I’m sure it could. But as my first written novel, I’m damn proud of it! I told everyone who would listen about my story!
My coworkers! (Paid to listen, captive audience!)
My friends! (People who seem really enthusiastic for me!)
My family! (Must love me no matter what!)
Random guy selling me books! (Strangely, genuinely interested… great feeling!)
People on the internet! (In the same boat as me, well… and you out there reading this!)
Finally, I’d written something worthwhile and it was good. The best thing I’d ever written. All the toiling over a keyboard, finally living up to my hopes and dreams. I loaded up my trusty MacBook and stared at my Pages document. Something wasn’t right. Not with the story, but a feeling. If I were a Jedi… I’d imagine this is what a disturbance in the force feels like.
What now?
All the words, characters, settings, and events… what was I supposed to do with them now? I have this responsibility to introduce them to the world and have no idea where to start. Guides online are absolutely hopeless or written by someone self-publishing or trying to get published. You can submit to publishing houses but they slog through probably thousands of unsolicited manuscripts. Some typo sneak into page one of your book? Deleted.
It felt like getting a degree all over again.
You do all the hard yards, get the grades and then they give you the certificate. Congratulations! You’re done! Go out and conquer the world! Then you wake up the next day at noon and wonder why you don’t have a job yet. You finished it! But so did everyone else. Some of them were actually better than you too. So your chances of landing the gig are even less. Then sometimes, it’s just who you know.
That feeling, the disturbance in the force, that diploma, all at once sitting there and joining together in a chorus of mockery.
“Oh, oh wait. You thought that was the hard part?” They laugh. “You poor thing.”
The worst part is while I’ve been searching for all (or any) tips I can find about the step after writing and editing, all writing website tips seem based around actually just writing.
“Just write.”
“Write it already.”
“You’ll never find the time, you have to make the time.”
“Set a schedule.”
“Find a support group.”
“Read a lot. Write a lot. Read some more. Write some more.”
Okay, okay. Now that I followed everyone’s advice… I look to their other articles, and all of them reiterate the same thing; Writing is the hardest part of writing. I made it though, so what now? It would be like getting to the light at the end of the tunnel and it just being a really bright room.
What the hell do we do now?
And I leave that question for you. If you’ve managed to get some decent advice or found a decent website on how to actually organise a manuscript, please point me in the direction! Thanks in advance!
Hi TJ, if you want to get published by a real publishing house, I have no idea how to go about that! Beware, though, of “pay to publish” schemes. These “publishers” sound like the real thing but they end up charging you several thousand dollars. If you want to self-publish, it’s actually pretty easy. That’s what I do, through Kindle, Smashwords (all the non-Amazon online platforms) and Createspace (for print books). I get to keep more revenue and retain all my rights to my own work.
Thanks so much for your input! That was actually one of my main reasons for attempting the traditional publishing route; That fear of being swindled. For me, I’ve been trying to avoid self publishing as I wish for my novel to be received as well as it can be. I don’t think I’d be very good at my own marketing or advertising, but I think when it comes down to it I will just keep writing. If nothing happens by the time I’ve finished all of my novels, then maybe I’ll self publish then.
Although I have a question for you! Are the copies you get through Createspace sellable in a store? I’d heard somewhere that that you cannot order a bunch of your book and put them into a local book shop. I haven’t looked into it to be honest, but I thought that would suck!
I don’t know about that – if it was an indie book shop, I’d think you could make arrangements. But I haven’t read the small print on that. I know that you can sell them yourself at events like library conferences and book fairs.
Yeah, it was actually at one of those events where I was told by the lady running it that you can print books for personal use or sale, but they don’t have the correct specifications for in store sales. I went to a self publishing seminar where the lady sold us her services and her books for 45 minutes. It was brutal.
Ugggghhhh.