Five Things You Gotta Know to Start Writing

Sometimes I think there’s too much information these days. It’s a good thing that it’s at our fingertips, but winnowing out the wheat from the chaff is the hard part.

When I started writing to sell some twenty-one years ago, writing historical fiction at the time, I researched what I could. But it was no substitute for good old-fashioned hard won experience.

  1. You Can’t Write in a Vacuum.

Mostly because it’s too cramped in one. But seriously, we have that image of a Writer, pounding away on a typewriter in a garret somewhere, surrounded by empty whiskey bottles and crumpled up bits of paper from failed attempts. We see the Writer as a solitary individual, wrestling with the Muse and her own inner demons. Well, all that might be accurate, but it’s not a good way to develop as a writer. Other people have to read your work. I mean, after all, you do hope to sell it, right?

Get yourself a critique group. And not just anyone. Your mother and Aunt Sadie are not the best reviewers of your work. You need other writers, preferably other writers who are better than you. And it’s true that writers need to have a thick skin. I’m very glad I spent fifteen years as a graphic designer previous to deciding on a career as a novelist. Graphic design entails designing commercial art for a client. The client chooses one of several samples of your work to go with, and in the meantime, they have plenty to say about it. You learned pretty quick that this wasn’t Great Art, but work for hire. And though you were the expert and the professional, it was very rare that your client had any taste at all. You grinned and bore it and cashed that very substantial check. Well, writing a book—essentially a product—is like that. You are writing for a client—an editor, and then for readers—and you must be able to accept criticism of the work and change what is unnecessary and what doesn’t help the flow of the story. Listen to good critique advice and then do it! Change it. Rewrite it. Yes, it’s hard work. But every professional worked hard to get it right. From the carpenter who built the roof over your head to the surgeon who is taking out your spleen. I sure hope they worked hard to get it right!

  1. Networking Is Key

Along with the romantic notion that an author is a solitary figure, suffering for their art, is the practical one. I wasn’t a believer in networking…until I actually did it and enjoyed the results.

I was plodding along, writing historical fiction, and though I had landed an agent, editors weren’t enamored of my manuscripts. I liked to write about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Editors wanted real, recognizable people from history for their books, the royal courts, and, God help us, the Tudors! After working my way through ten years of writing and the same ten of rejections, a former agent suggested I switch to writing medieval mysteries. It turned out the kind of books I liked to write translated much better into a mystery: a fictional detective solving fictional crimes, with real people and events from the past staged in the background and sometimes intruding on the action. And then I learned a great deal more about writing mysteries and the mystery community. For one, I discovered that there were publisher imprints devoted solely to mysteries. I found independent bookstores that only catered to mysteries. I saw that there were mystery fan conventions, another place to sell you and your books. And I discovered mystery writer organizations wherein I could discuss the unique work of writing mysteries and how to work in the system.

If it wasn’t for my membership in Sisters in Crime, I don’t think I would have gotten published so fast once I made the switch. It’s a mystery writer and reader organization, and it gave me a chance to network with people who understood the genre. I learned some real world do’s and don’t’s, hobnobbed with successful writers, and got my critique group which I used for a decade. And through all this hobnobbing, I’ve gotten wonderful author blurbs for my books, been asked to be in several anthologies, got speaking gigs, guest blog posts, and was elected president of the Orange County chapter, vice-president of the Los Angeles chapter, and president of the prestigious southern California chapter of Mystery Writers of America. All of these things help to get your name out there and books sold. And you get to pay it forward for all the help you got getting started.

There are all sorts of organisations for writers, genre-specific or not: Southern California Writers AssociationScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; Romance Writers of America; Horror Writers of America … and so many more. Local ones, national ones, etc.

  1. Getting The Most Out Of Your Promotion

I had learned along the way that you needed an online presence. Now I hear a lot of would-be authors complain that since they haven’t published anything, they don’t have anything to put up on their websites. Not true! Listen, you have to get that domain name anyway, so get to it. Get one in your name dot com, your character’s name (if you are writing a series), and maybe even the series title. It may not mean that you ever use it, but it’s insurance that no one else can snatch it away from you. If you have a very common name, you might get your url as AuthorJaneDoe. I have an unusual name so I never worried about that.

Get it professionally done. Again, if you want to be perceived as a professional, you have to be a professional and hire professionals to do what they do best. This is your public face. You don’t want it to look amateurish, do you? So if you self-publish that means hiring professionals to edit, copy edit, and design your cover. I am a graphic designer, so it’s okay for me, not for the amateur. Because you definitely don’t want a cover that screams amateur.

What to include on your website: Post a little bio of yourself and any accomplishments, awards, or professional organizations you belong to. Then add a page about your book and series (if it is one). A brief synopsis will do. If you’ve written any short stories, this is also the place to post them on their own pages. This website is a placeholder, but it’s also a landing page to find you. There will be links to your professional social media pages. Once again, separate your personal from your professional. Your Bluesky handle, your Pinterest boards, should be YOUR NAME. Anything else you are doing out there that relates to your books should have YOUR NAME. And blog or substack or video. You can include a blog on your website, that way it won’t remain static until you can announce a book sale. What do you blog about? The theme of your books. You are the expert now on what you are writing about in your fiction. If you write quilting stories, blog about quilts. If you are writing cooking mysteries, write about cooking.

  1. Prepare Presentations

With any luck, once you are published you will be contacting libraries in order to give presentations and to sell your book. There are writing organizations, libraries, book clubs, women’s guilds—all sorts of places where you might be asked to talk as an author. And so you need to prepare interesting presentations. If you are memorable, then your books will be memorable. These talks need to be five minutes, fifteen minutes, half an hour, and an hour. In other words, be prepared for any kind of situation. The five and fifteen minute talks are when you are one of many authors, say, at a luncheon or author panel. Find a unique little story to tell about yourself, your research, your character, your writing process that will be interesting to share. For the longer versions, the half hour and hour versions, you will likely be alone, so don’t concentrate on the hard sell. Talk about some aspect of the book that you researched that is interesting.

And props are great. When I wrote my medieval mysteries, I brought along medieval weapons to display and demonstrate. There is nothing like a plump, middle-aged woman swinging a sword around. That’s memorable! But if you write cooking mysteries, for instance, maybe you can bring a hotplate and do a brief demo on cooking something fun and simple. There are all sorts of ways to capture an audience. If you are a good writer with a great book, you should be able to come up with a captivating way to entertain an audience.

 

  1. Do Your Homework

Know how to format a manuscript. Write and prepare your synopses. There should be an elevator pitch (25 words long that is easy for you to say what your book is about), a very brief paragraph that you will use in your query letters, a full page, and a full several page synopsis. Listen to other professionals and to their recommendations. Don’t be a diva. It may take a lifetime to get on the bestseller list. It may never happen. But don’t treat the world as if they owe you. They don’t.

Get an agent. An agent can get you a very nice contract with a big or medium publisher, can protect your characters and your series for you, can get you foreign sales, audiobook contracts from audiobook producers, help you get your rights back, get you film and TV options, and handle contract disputes. Research agents. Find them on QueryTracker.com and look for agents by the genre they represent. Make your own list. Send them exactly what they request. If all they want is a query letter, then send them that, but first, teach yourself how to write a query letter (there are tons of free examples online). If you’d rather self-publish, then learn to keep everything professional. You never know if at some future date you might wish to publish traditionally or need an agent for other services.

Now get out there and write. And good luck!


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