And What of Publishing?

    Now, the truth must be known right off that I am not an expert in the publishing process. I do not fully know what constitutes a good book, to the publishers who read the thousands of excerpts sent to them from anxious writers everywhere.
    I have, however, a little experience from the author’s point of view.
    I am NOT published. (My poetry has been published a few times, but never yet a novel.)
    However, I hope to give you some ideas of what to keep in mind while pursuing the publishing process. I am currently reopening the publishing portion of my life after my first, unsuccessful phase.
    The process of submitting your work for publishers (and agents) is a rollercoaster ride of emotion. First, you feel confident, assured that no one could reject your book. Then the first rejection comes in and you are crushed, you wish you had never submitted at all. Then you build up your confidence again and keep going, caught in the rollercoaster that is publishing.

    Although I cannot speak from experience, I would say that the best way to get published is to be persistent. But keep writing and reading while you're working at it. Write you next book while you're waiting to hear back from publishers.
    If you are not able to find someone willing to publish your books, there are many options available to you.
    First of all, you may want to reedit and reevaluate your novel, just to make sure that it is the best it can be. No one wants to be published only to realize that they could have done much better. Take another look at your novel and consider if you should change anything, if it needs more polishing. After this, you may want to try submitting it again.
    Another popular option is self-publishing. You can do this many ways. I have known people to write novels chapter by chapter on blogs. Amazon allows you to sell online through them (see the link on the sidebar) with minimal cost and maximum royalties. Createspace is another option.
    NaNoWriMo winners receive discounts, or coupons, to many editing and publishing websites, so if you are looking into this option, I recommend participating in a year of NaNoWriMo.
    Some of the largest disadvantages to self-publishing are as follows: you are in charge of publicity, you will probably never see your book in a bookstore (every writer's dream!), you must find or make your own cover art, and you are fully in charge of editing the novel yourself.
    Now, all these obstacles can be overcome, but it is best to know what you are getting into before taking the plunge.
    In the second phase of my publishing efforts, I have already received one refusal. (Sigh...) But life goes on.

Good luck! and I will keep you posted.

Zoë 

Endings

    Sorry I’m behind! NaNoWriMo starts in less than a month, and I have a story that I want to write… but I don’t know the end!
    They say that you should never start writing a book until you have the ending planned. This is hard for me because I’m a beginning/ middle writer.
    There is a fantastic novel called the Book of Story Beginnings. It is about all those ideas and fragments of stories that people come up with but never finish. I recommend it, just for fun, though it isn’t too deep.
    But, as we saw in the Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling a few weeks ago, endings are hard. After all, they are one of the most important parts of the story told. If there was no ending, why bother telling it at all?
    Often (though not as often as I would like), good stories write themselves, if you let them. If you let your characters meld with their setting and their conflict, it may become clear what they must do, what will happen, and what has ‘got to give’, as they say.
    But then, isn’t it better to write the beginning of a story and wait for the end to come to you than not to write it at all? I am inclined to think that it is.
    Still, I feel restless while I don’t know.

Zoë