How It Started...

...How It's Going

My first attempt at writing a novel was shortly after I graduated from college at 21 years old. It was called The Altar. (Spoiler alert: it’s not great.) 

I had a job at my parents’ small business, and I lived with one of my girlfriends in a two-bedroom apartment in the suburb where we’d graduated from high school four years earlier. I was dating the guy who would become my husband, and I was writing whenever the Muse appeared in feathers and pearls. I felt very grown up.

When my roommate had to move out to help take care of a family member, I converted her room into a little office space with a tiny desk and a kitchen table chair. ‘Me’ in fifteen years while sitting criss-cross applesauce on the dojo mat at my kid’s karate lesson trying to draft a novel would laugh at the pretentiousness of it all. I needed my own office when literally no one else was in the apartment with me? I suppose that was the only way I expected to summon Mrs. Muse. It would be years until I discovered that she’s actually an elusive little sprite who can’t be trusted.

I had no idea what I was doing, but I opened up a Word file on my large desktop computer, named it Chapter 1 and began typing. Here’s what came out: 

She moved her hand gently over her abdomen, smoothing her black skirt as she got out of her red Accord.  It was a little chillier than most spring days in Macon, so she bundled her cotton cardigan closer around her small arms.

I mean, it’s fine. Whatever. Adjective heavy, very basic descriptions, a double space between the sentences–and am I sensing a heavy-handed allusion to an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy? Scandalous! This must be the thing that will move the plot forward, the inciting incident, if you will!

I can roll my eyes at the-then-writerly-me, but I’m also very proud of her for starting something, for making herself sit in the chair and type some words onto the page. Sadly, I wasn’t very disciplined, writing when the mood struck rather than on a schedule. Discipline, it seems, came later when I actually had only 15 minute spurts while my kids played outside or watched an episode of Word World. (“Let’s build a word!”)

By Chapter 34 of the ‘novel,’ I felt like the story was finished. It clocked in at 37K words. Oops. Only half of a novel’s expected length. Oh well. I wasn’t serious anyway. I didn’t know about querying, and in 2004, it was all done by mail and I was focused on other things like being a grown up!

If I look at this era as the starting point of my life as a writer, I am very impressed with how far this naive girl has come. She now knows how to pace a story (mostly, though tbh, I still struggle the most with this part.) She knows how to make a story into a full-length novel (though I did just write a 25K novella, so maybe I’m moving backwards?). She knows how the industry works (query, agent, sub, editor. Rinse. Repeat.). 

I had no idea that in two decades I would get to see my books in print, and I have no idea now if I’ll still see new ones in print in 20 years. Who knows? Maybe by 2044 paper won’t exist anymore (kidding). The industry is changing, and though perhaps it’s always changing, something about the rise of indie publishing and hybrid authors and the crowded state of the market makes this feel like one of those moments when things will shake until something’s gotta give. 

I’m on sub right now for novel number four, and it feels like every time I speak to my agent, there’s a sense of ‘things are tough right now.’ My editor told me that this has been a difficult year for a lot of traditionally published authors, and when I spoke with a mentor author friend and expressed my hopes of being a lead title with my next book, she told me something along the lines of, “Be grateful if you get a deal right now.” Good advice.

Some trad authors who don’t get deals right now will stop writing, but my guess is that most will not–at least not for the long haul. If you ask most authors when they knew they wanted to write, they will talk about their childhood (My sister and I used to ‘make books’ in a hideaway storage spot under the stairs). My theory is that these currently struggling authors will become something else, something new, something we haven’t seen before: trad authors turned hybrid, writing amazing stories, deciding their own publishing dates, creating their own small-time publishing houses, and communicating directly with their readers. They may also continue to publish traditionally, especially after the market readjusts itself, but they will know that they have power that they didn’t have before.

I’m personally listening to podcasts about indie publishing (check out What I Wish I’d Known), reading about going wide (check out “Wide for the Win” on Facebook), and using Kickstarter (Kickstart Your Book Sales podcast). That 25K-word novella that I mentioned might be my first attempt.

Maybe I’m wrong and maybe authors will wait out this moment in traditional publishing’s history, but maybe I’m right and we’re about to see some kind of change just over the horizon. Time—and the market—will tell.