There is much to be said about writing. I wanted to write from the time I was in grade school when I wrote about life in NYC for my Norwegian classmates. As a product of those times, I wrote about domestic life in the future where floors were cleaned by robots, not women, and food was cooked in seconds by some nameless device, and yes, I lived a fairytale life with a prince that Cinderella herself would envy. Every now and then, I would delve into the life of Tudors and write about life at the court of Henry VIII, or let my stories take the side of Native Americans in an era of Cowboys and Indians. Regardless of topics, I always wrote something.
Not quite daring to make writing a career, I chose medicine, a career I saw as humanitarian and stable, only to find my way back to my passion for writing decades later.
The big surprise when I was about to embark on this second career was that I was far from the natural talent I thought I was, although I wasn’t as delusional as a person I met at a cocktail party who told me his book was going to be a bestseller, although he hadn’t had the time to write it yet.
I started taking writing classes, screenwriting classes, playwriting classes, joined writing groups, went to writing conferences, and starting writing articles for online magazines and local publications.
It was after reading the book “Writing the Blockbuster Novel,†by Al Zuckerman of the Writers House, and Ken Follet’s, “The Man from St. Petersburg,†that I actually started my first novel.
My first book grew from the discovery of what was expected of widows in early St. Augustine, and as the protagonist’s story grew into a second book, my discovery of how different slaves were treated in St. Augustine during the Spanish years, compared to the British period, gave me more to say, and put more story lines to twist.
I will tell you why you need an agent in another post, but for now I want to talk about how important it is that you and your agent, be on the same page…, not literally of course.
For my story to work, I had to create a past that no woman in her right mind would want to return to, so I turned to a something women have endured since the beginning of time. My agent found the scenes unsavory, although they were hardly explicit, and thought that in this “me too†era, publishers were reluctant to acquire anything controversial, although it was hardly that either.
My thoughts are the opposite. Although my 1760s heroine had no voice, as women have today, there is no reason to perpetuate the silence of victims through centuries. There should be no hiding of what has been reality for so many.
Still this is not the central focus of my books, only a tool to force Hannah Stafford to dig deep for the strength to move forward, and not look back.
So, now I’m back to searching for an agent, once again……..
Before I send out a query, I search for agents representing my genre, look at what they have sold, what their likes and dislikes are, their query requirements, and read as much as I can find about them before I query. Interviews posted to YouTube are particularly helpful to get a better impression of who they are.
After writing a book, getting it in the best shape possible, before sending it out to agents is crucial. It is disheartening to know that a rejection might be the result of a query barely skimmed, and that you won’t have a chance to defend your story, or find out what you put in that one-page query that caused the three hundred pages you wrote not to be seen.
I don’t know why literary agents often say that they have to fall in love with their client’s work in order to sell it, after all, real estate agents don’t love the houses they sell, but this difference makes writing queries especially challenging.
Challenging or not, there is no reason to quit. I’m keeping at it, and so should you.
