Write what you love, not what you think others will like.
The spirit of those words is the wellspring of originality and the way to have fun with the creative process. It dug me out of a severe case of block and got me to the end of my novel.
But once I started querying, I felt myself being pulled away from them. It was one thing to be an individual while writing, but querying was all about showing how your story fit. The story had to fit a genre, it had to fit a word count specification, it had to fit an age category, and it had to be as similar as possible to other books that the agent liked. I felt like I was in high school trying to be accepted by the popular kids by wearing the same kinds of clothes they wore.
Websites on publishing advised finding out as much as possible about the agent and her \”pet writing peeves,\” her writing philosophy, what styles she liked, and what she was looking for. I was encouraged to do enough research on her to pepper my letter with \”genuine compliments,\” a technique referred to as personalizing the query letter.
This advice is considered so standard, few ever question it. But trying to please a stranger was a radical reversal of the writing philosophy that had restored my creativity after a long dry spell and a nightmarish depression, and I found myself emotionally unable to follow the advice I was given.
I do not write in order to produce slightly modified clones of previous financial successes, so comparing my books to that of other writers felt dishonest. So did flattering the agent. I am not against giving compliments as long as they are spontaneous, and not as part of a recipe. It may seem strange that this time-honored process, which thousands of writers have undergone, would bother me.
After all, writing a book is a different process than seeking representation. Could I not just retain my individual voice while writing and afterward do whatever was needed to land a deal? I asked myself that question many times and finally realized that I could not be one person when I wrote and someone else in my real life. What affected me affected my writing. And what I wrote affected my life.
Besides, I did not want to spend valuable time, which I could have spent creating a new story or novel, by explaining how my writing fit into a pre-existing mold. I want to write — and read — books that have not already been written. I decided not to worry about the flattery, and I gave up trying to explain why my book was like Twilight. I continued to query but when the rejections rolled in, I was unhappy.
Most of the criticisms had nothing to do with writing. I was told that my book was too long for any publisher to consider from a debut author. I was scolded for not clearly labeling my book either “middle grade” or “young adult.” And of course, there was the standard, “Sorry. Not what I am looking for.”
The more I queried, the more I missed self-publishing. While I remained confident about my writing, all of the time I was spending trying to customize my formatting to satisfy individual agents was seeming more and more like a wasted effort. Meanwhile, to stay sane, I continued to write new fiction stories. I posted a few of them to my blog and got some enthusiastic responses from readers.
The chilly responses from agents were such a jolting contrast to what I was used to from my blogging experience. Querying agents was a different world. “Sorry I was not drawn in,” said one. No one had ever told me that about my blog posts.
With each new query I sent, I felt more depleted. My computer fought me with creaking delays as I tried to conform to the various formatting requirements each agent required. In my frustration, I tweeted about how my clunky laptop refused to cooperate, apparently preferring that I self-publish, which certainly sounded appealing that day.
Shortly after my tweet, I received a message from a representative of a publisher called Rooster and Pig Publishing, essentially saying, “Don’t give up yet! Send your manuscript to us first. We need books for our new fantasy category.”
With mounting excitement, I went to their website. After reading about them, I had the impression that they were a publisher willing to take risks on originaity. They were in the process of expanding their range of genres to include fantasy. They said they had one essential requirement: excellent writing.
They sounded like my kind of publisher. I sent them my novel. After making a few requested revisions, a couple of months ago received my acceptance letter. I was so excited, I was unable to sleep that night. A few weeks ago, I signed the book deal.
Although my experience may sound like a \”deus ex machina\” story, I had tried to to tilt odds in my favor by building my Twitter following to 25,000, and I had been blogging for several years, writing as well as I could about things that mattered to me, just as I had with my novel The Ghosts of Chimera, which is projected to be released in October or November of 2015.
In short, The Ghosts of Chimera is a psychological fantasy about a troubled 11 year old boy who ventures into a perilous alternate universe in a desperate search of a ghost of his younger brother. Meanwhile, the lines between reality and fantasy blur, until it is hard for my character to tell the difference. I will go into more detail in later posts, but that is the gist.
To say I am thrilled fails to adequately convey how hopeful I feel. Although I considered myself a “real writer” long before the book deal, many doors were locked to me after self-publishing my first novel. I had trouble getting a book signing outside my home town or being taken seriously by reviewers. I hope I will be freer now to promote my new book in a way that I was unable to do with my previous novel.
I am excited about learning from the publishing process, and I am hugely relieved not to have to query agents anymore, which leaves me freer to write new stories, novels, and blog posts. In the meantime, I maintain my philosophy of writing what I love, and I stand firm in my opinion that the best art is produced by an artist, not someone who tries to divine what an agent or anyone else is looking for.
Like any art, writing is an expression of the self. But there is no art where there is no self, and I am thrilled to have found a publisher who understands that.