10 Things NOT to Say to an Agent or Editor # 10
# 10. “I’m so angry / disheartened / fed up with the publishing industry.”
Publishing is a tough business for everyone involved, not just writers. It’s hard but there’s nothing for it but to keep a professional attitude and keep your spirits up so you can keep on writing.
Know what you are getting into. Don’t speak or act inappropriately. Do whatever it takes to develop the resilience you’ll need to thrive in this always competitive environment. Keep your emotional reactions for family and friends.
But most of all, keep writing. It will take you where you need to go.
Writing is not publishing, being published is not what makes you a writer. But if being published is what you want, then there’s nothing for it but to work on. Despite how it appears, agents and editors are desperate for good ideas and stories, elegantly expressed.
Keep on improving and sooner or later, you will find somebody who wants to put you into print.
6 Responses to “10 Things NOT to Say to an Agent or Editor # 10”
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April 16th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Thanks for all the great encouragement with the tips over the past two weeks.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Hello, from the States. (Syracuse NY)
Really enjoyed your 10 points and gained alot from them. Excellent idea. Thank you.
Please continue in the same vein, with easily digestable, bit size info blurbs.
csm
April 16th, 2008 at 9:11 pm
thanks Charlie, always good to get feedback. As you may know, we are new to blogging and trying out different kinds to see what goes down well. so thanks. Good luck with the writing — and the submissions.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Before reading this article, I was confident that blogging my novel would be a great venue to get my manuscript critiqued and edited by readers, which would help me polish it to the highest level of excellency, worthy of publication. But now, I have doubts.
April 26th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Hi Tasha, if you can get a following for your novel online, that can help swing a publisher to take you on. And as you say, it’s a good way to get feedback and engage with readers. We are great believers in the power of the Internet for writers and our most recent signing was in part because of that writer’s online fans.
So the short answer is that this CAN be a good route — but like most things in publishing, it depends…
Without knowing more about your book, it’s hard to say
April 27th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Anyone who’s interested is welcome to see what it’s all about. Here’s the URL address.
http://loveandromance-tashabud.blogspot.com/
The gist of the story is about a woman, with strong traditional values, who succombs to infidelity. The story will tell of the whys and hows. It tells about her emotional, physical, and mental struggles. It tells about what happened and what will eventually happen in the end. There will be lots of twists and turns along the way to keep the readers’ interest. This may sound like a not so interesting story, but I can’t be too specific on line, for it will give away the novel’s secret formula, which the readers will have to dig and explore for themselves.
The beginning of the story is not the ending scene, even if it leads the reader to believe that.