Be on the lookout for:
Aspiring author. In possession of one completed manuscript, multiple contest wins under belt. Hair may or may not be out of control but sense of determination to sell THAT manuscript is palpable. May make various promises that s/he will eventually move on to the next work in progress but direct suggestions that they let the manuscript go and move on to the next book may result in bodily harm. Apply extreme caution when approaching aspiring author and suggesting they work on/complete/submit the next work in progress. May be armed with caustic words and should be considered dangerous.
The one-manuscript author. I’ll bet most of you know or have known a fellow writer like this. Someone who wrote a book. One book. Finished it. Polished it. Maybe rewrote it once or twice (or ten times) to fit the genre trends. At one time it was a paranormal. No wait, an erotic romance. No, a paranormal inspirational. It’s been entered into every contest known to the romance industry and had to be retired from the contest circuit because the judges now recognize it by the opening line.
The author loves this manuscript. This is THE book. Her book. Maybe the book of her heart. But it’s been rejected, refused and recycled so much that every agent and editor has seen it and said no. But still she doesn’t work on something new. This. Book. Must. Sell.
We all know someone who’s been in this place. Someone we’ve wanted to pull aside and really give a good talking to (or shaking). But maybe they’re not hearing you, or not ready to hear you. Maybe you can post the link to this post in a place they might see it and hope a little self-revelation takes place. I’m not an author, so I can’t really relate to this sense of desperation and attachment to a book. But I am an editor and I can tell you what I’m looking for in an author.
Wanted:
Motivated author who never stops growing his/her craft. Looks at writing as their business and their job—part-time okay. Writes as often as possible, explores new worlds and new ideas. Knows that not everything they write will always sell. Not everything they write will always be the best thing they wrote. But keeps aspiring to be better. To write their best book ever. Prior experience not necessary but the drive to keep writing is a must.
No related posts.
I haven’t met the One Book Writer, but I’ve heard the campfire stories.
One thing I have seen over and over: successful authors rarely sell the first book they write. Or if they do, it’s not the first book they sell.
Where do I apply for that ‘Wanted’ position?
It’s hard to let go of stories we believe in. So you know what I did?
I took the premise of a rejected story that had been sitting for a few years, and rewrote it from scratch, keeping what worked (the heroine and the hook) and recreating everything else.
Let’s face it…the more you write the more you grow. That first rendition certainly didn’t cut the mustard. The second was my first Harlequin sale. How can you have a learning curve if you stop with one book????
My first AND second books are in a box. You are safe. And I have met the “Book of my heart” aspiring author. All advice is useless.
Great idea to take the premise, heroine and hook and completely rewrite. You’re write that we continue to grow the more we do this. Stagnating on the first manuscript gets us nowhere. It’s hard to put the unsuccessful first endeavor away, but it’s the only way to get caught up in the adventure of the second novel.
I’ve also met writers who never progress past the first three chapters. A woman I know hasn’t written/completed a book for 15 years. She keeps coming up with ideas, even pitches some, says she’s going to start and then never does. I have to wonder if she suffers fear of success or fear of failure.
I feel a bit sorry for the one-manuscript author, I know several authors who fit that description. Personally, I have learned so much from my first attempts at novel writing and nothing has been wasted. I’ve recycled characters and settings in books that are now published. Was my first novel worthy of publication? No. It’s all been a learning experience for me, every rejection, every critique.
It’s sad that some authors can’t or don’t want to let go and move on. Maybe it’s a psychological thing like when people accumulate too much clutter. [Coughs! I think I recognise myself there.] Haven’t sorted that one out yet, but the writing, I have been able to progress with.
Don’t assume that the book is bad, though. I have one of those books– a book I love that’s gone out on two separate submissions rounds, albeit, eighteen months apart and after substantial revising. The revising, however, was not to make it a different book with respect to trend, but simply to improve it, since I had grown as a writer in those eighteen months.
Still hasn’t sold.
Still doesn’t mean that it’s a bad book. It’s just a bad publishing climate for the type of women’s fiction books I write. And I refuse to write to trend. So in a way, I’m That Writer, who doesn’t listen. Who believes the book is good.
I’ve also written other manuscripts since then as well, so it’s not as if I’m banking on that MS being The One. Just that it eventually gets a chance.
Not guilty. But you hit the nail on the head when you noted the contest entries. I see a lot of acquaintances addicted to contests, hoping that the very special judge will finally see it and buy it. I don’t know how they afford to enter all these contests!
I don’t want “the most lauded unsold book” award. I’ll move on, thank you very much.
Great post, EE/GM
I haven’t met one of those but I have heard the myths of them. I do know a whole lot more people who don’t get past chapter 3. If you ask me getting past Chapter 3 is harder than getting to the end. THe newness (is that a word?) has worn off and the hard part has started. I’ve known peopel who have perfected the art of the first three chapters. Sent them off, gotten request for fulls, but they still don’t get to THE END.
I’m not sure which one of the two are worst.
Just a sidenote:I’m on my fourth novel and I’ve never entered a contest so no I’m not a one manuscript author.
Another sidenote: Always re-read post. I meant to spell “people”.
I know a few of these writers. Despite my cajoling, pleading, and even being a hardass about it, they are stuck on That One Book.
With 11 unsold manuscripts under my bed, I don’t think I qualify. They don’t all suck – just the wrong thing at the wrong time. (Though to be fair, some of them do suck – out loud.) I’ve considered pulling a few out, polishing them up and sending them to my agent, but I know I never will. I’ve grown past them, and my writing is nothing like it was when I started, lo a thousand years ago.
I mostly wanted to say, this syndrome isn’t reserved for newbies. It can happen to old warhorses like me. Despite 3 books published – and one sold that will never be published because Bombshell bit it – and winning a RITA, I currently have a project that I can’t let go. Everyone who reads it, likes it, but the subject matter is a bit dodgy, so it’s still unsold. I can’t let it go – and my agent is going down as the Most Amazing Agent Ever because she’s standing by it until the bitter end. Which we are thankfully not at, just yet.
If we get there, I will mourn this project, but I’ll move on.
And that’s the key – moving on. It’s really hard to say goodbye, but sometimes, it’s the only way.
I should also mention that while I’m waiting to hear back on this project, I’m writing something else. The one and only cure for grief from projects that don’t make it, or the angst of waiting, is writing something else – falling in love with the next one.
I think I might have been that author if it had occurred to me to try and sell my first book right off the bat, LOL! I’d already finished my second book when I discovered RWA and began shopping the first one around, but I was bound and determined to sell that first book (and I did).
That old quote, “Kill your darlings,” is some of the best writing advice ever given. When we fall in love with our books, we lose sight of their flaws. I’ve noticed that the more I love a story I’m writing, the less likely I am to even like it a year later.
A couple years ago, I wrote a story that I adored. My critique group wasn’t so keen on it; nobody seemed to like it but me. I shelved it, ran across it a year later, and realized I had been so enthralled with my own ideas that I’d written an over-detailed, under-plotted, meandering mess.
I still like the world and the characters, though. One of these days, when I’ve sharpened my critical eye to a lethal edge, I’ll haul that story back onto my desktop and gut it like a sacrificial lamb.
I’m starting to think that you can either love writing, or you can love the things you write. If you love writing then you change, you grow, you hone your skills to better practice your craft. If you love what you write, you drag the same manuscript around for years wondering why nobody appreciates your baby the way you do.
Bettie that’s a great perspective! Wish I’d thought of something that profound.
Bettie,
I really like how you put that. I fell in love with a book of mine that a number of agents loved for three chapters at least ;o) I still love it! But it’s a mature love, because now I see the flaws and warts. Damn, though, didn’t I let it get published anyway. There’s a blank virtual shelf on my computer, and I need to let my books age a bit more. Rewrites are hell, but rejections are heller ;o)
Ciar
My first book was a 500-page soap opera, literally, a book about a soap star. It was a complicated single title I pitched at RWA to a category editor. She looked a little dazed after my pitch. Or maybe she was in pain. Soon after, I ditched the manuscript. Don’t know where it is. I suspect it’s part of an artificial reef in the Keys now.
Have heard of the syndrome, don’t personally know anyone suffering from it.
Me, I didn’t know from contests when I started out. I wrote two books before I submitted. Second one sold, first one never did. But I think by the time of that first sale, I’d written at least three more books.
(Pause to remember the Gold Old Days when I couldn’t get the ideas down fast enough.
)
Over the years, I’ve accumulated three or four books that never found a home. Or, in one case, found a home, got returned to me, and is now making the rounds all over again.
I’ve discovered that my statute of limitations generally runs around five years — after that, I’ve completely let go, moved on, and honestly don’t care anymore. One or two stories still nag, and may yet be resurrected in another form one of these days. But I don’t even have copies of a couple of those older ones, who died when the old harddrive did. And I didn’t even mourn their loss.
Sometimes first books sell, sometimes (often) they don’t, although obviously (okay, maybe not so obviously) expecting to sell without spending time learning the craft is crazy. This sounds a bit different, however: Revising and learning doesn’t seem to be a problem as much as letting go of the first effort and taking what you’ve learned into new territory. I think for those people the idea of spending all that time on something and then letting it return to the ether whence it came seems counterintuitive.
But sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do.
Of course, what baffles me is…how do they keep from telling all those *other* stories???
I second what Bettie says!
And take to heart the old adage:
Write, submit, write, submit!
Maybe I’ve just become a softie (or perhaps I left my objectivity in a Pennsylvania hospital’s maternity ward almost four years ago), but I think there’s something much worse than the one-manuscript writer:
The individual who never allows him- or herself to write a gosh darn word.
I mean, yes, it’s frustrating when you deal with people who cling to a piece of literary flotsam. But, geesh, at least they took a chance.
I have known so many people (women, mostly) who never allowed themselves to pursue their dreams of putting an idea into a story format. And I just find that very disheartening, especially knowing how powerfully writing can change someone’s whole life.
(Okay, that was just too damn schmaltzy… I obviously have been watching too much Disney Pixar crap. Somebody throw me a copy of Ibsen, okay? Blechh.)
For ten years Pocket Books had an annual trade paperback anthology called “Strange New Worlds” which contained the top 23 stories (three winners and twenty runners-up) from a writing contest. Anyone in the US with fewer than three professional sales could enter. Average number of entries was 4,000 and three or four years there were less than 23 stories because they weren’t going to lower standards just to fill the book.
Sometime after failing to get into #2 I became part of an online group of aspiring Trek writers determined to get in the anthology. One of our members had a story that violated the rules of the contest. It was 1000 words too long and it involved relationships/relatives that did not exist in any of the TV shows or movies. (Specifically, for all you Trekkies out there, it centered on Lore and Deanna’s daughter.) Her story was a story so beautiful, she assured us, that it transcended the rules of the contest. She didn’t last long with our group. However she was a presence on the web, and each year when the winners were announced she jammed the message boards on Simon and Schuster’s site and Trek forums everywhere with her denunciation of the contest as fixed — that only friends of the judges won. After #6 winners were announced and she went on her tirade, I lost my head and offered to look at what she had submitted that year and maybe offer some advice. Not a single word had been changed — it was the same story she’d been submitting since year one. I had the sense to walk away.
A concert pianist does not expect people to buy tickets to every practice session. Why do writers expect someone to buy every story? Quite frankly, becoming a concert pianist involves a lot more hard work.
The mantra — and I know someone else has already posted a variation — is Write; mail; repeat. It’s the only way to grow, the only way to become better at our craft, the only way to be professional.
[...] Angela James wrote a wonderful little Romancing the Blog post about the one-manuscript author. We all know them. James’s description is right on the money. I’ll bet most of you know or have known a fellow writer like this. Someone who wrote a book. One book. Finished it. Polished it. Maybe rewrote it once or twice (or ten times) to fit the genre trends. At one time it was a paranormal. No wait, an erotic romance. No, a paranormal inspirational. It’s been entered into every contest known to the romance industry and had to be retired from the contest circuit because the judges now recognize it by the opening line. [...]
I’ve learned that I need to start the next book as soon as the previous is sold. If I don’t, I lose inspiration and gawd knows how long it will take to get it back!