Slogging Thru It

It's, like, 0120, and I've been taking a break from writing to read some weekend blog updates. One of my favorite blogs, Star Captains Daughter, is written by a fellow writer who is very active in the blogging writer community. Today she blogs about the frustrating (and sometimes soul crushing) path to snagging an agent. It brought to mind my search for an agent, and I realized that maybe it was time to chronicle my journey.

I've been writing since I first learned how to string together words to form sentences. Before that, I was always telling stories to entertain my younger brother or even my stuffed animals. I devoured books, and often re-wrote the endings to suit my tastes. I always knew that I was going to be an author. It was just a matter of getting my big break. I wrote seven complete manuscripts between sixth grade and my senior year of high school. Most of them are in the 85 to 110 thousand word range, and while not masterpieces of literature, they served an important purpose: they allowed me to grow as a writer and refine my craft.

The first two years of college, I hardly wrote anything at all. Sure, I was constantly jotting down ideas for future projects, and I would write the occassional erotica story to amuse myself, but I didn't work on a single novel. In 2004, I decided that I needed to make time and started working on a historical romance. It was a hulking manuscript of behemoth proportions, and while the concept was one that would be considered "high concept" the story was just too long. There were too many characters, too much description, and it dragged. Realizing it needed a lot of work and having already lost interest in the characters, I shelved the manuscript.

I sat around for a while, trying to decide what I would write next. I had two stacks of spirals filled with handwritten synopses for some sixty stories, but they were all fantasy or romance. I wanted to write something with teeth, something real, something organic.

During the summer of 2005, I was at home with my family and sifting through some old high school papers and awards. I found a handwritten letter from Elmer Kelton (the acclaimed western novelist) who had graciously read and critiqued a historical manuscript I sent to him during high school. He said the writing was strong and the story interesting, but he wondered why I was writing a story set in Venice. He gave me the severely cliched line that makes a lot of writers cringe. "Write what you know," he said.

Sitting back, I thought about his advice, and finally, it was clear. Write what I know. So I did. In a little over four weeks, I completed A Bourgeois Existence, a book that chronicled a group of friends as they navigated through the quagmire of college, searching for the meaning of life, love, and ultimately happiness. It was a story that mirrored my life at the time, and when I was finished, I felt as if I had really accomplished something.

But, as often happens in this business, none of the agents I queried felt the same way. I had a few requests for partials, two requests for fulls, but they all ended in rejection. I won't lie. It hurt--a lot. I cried. I cussed. I vowed never to write again. But I couldn't stop writing. Something about that story had changed me. I realized that despite the painful rejections, I wanted to try again, to put myself through it all over again, just on the off chance that I might finally succeed.

I started writing Sangre in the January 2006 and by March had finished the novel. I started querying agents, and out of 21 queries, I received eight requests for partials and one enthusiastic request for a full. All of the agents who requested partials rejected me, but every single one of them added handwritten or personalized rejection letters, many of them telling me that they felt my novel was more suited for the literary market rather than the commercial market. The agent who requested my full liked the story, but felt the manuscript needed extensive revisions. She sent me detailed pages of advice and thoroughly marked my manuscript, pointing about passages that were far too lenghthy, places where I should elaborate, etc. I revised the manuscript during the fall, and by the end of December, Irene, my future agent, was reading it. On New Year's Eve, I received an email offering representation, and now my manuscript is making the rounds of editors' desks.

Sure, I've received a handful of rejections from publishers, but hey, it only takes one yes. And even if Sangre doesn't sell, I'm confident my next novel will. It's that confidence, that unshakable belief in one's self, that leads to success. In any career field, you're going to hit a few walls, but you've just got to slog through them. As my friends and I often tell one another: Cowboy up and deal with it.

That said, I'm going to slog through another chapter and then it's off to bed. Until tomorrow....