How this "writing" thing works

For me, that is. I have a coworker who likes to ask "So, are you published yet?" almost every time I see him. He hasn't so much lately (because I told him to quit it) but the reason he asked in the first place is because most non-literary types just don't understand how much time and work this process takes.

With that in mind, I'm going to tell you how it works for me.

First, I have an idea. This can come from any number of different places, because my sources of inspiration are as varied as the stories I come up with: album covers, songs, pictures in magazines, movies, all kinds of things. I usually don't write it down immediately. I let it swirl around in my head for a while--a few weeks at the very least--to decide whether or not it's worth keeping. After that, the idea will either take a more coherent shape, or disappear and go away.

Then I start to write. This isn't as simple a process as you might think. I rarely write a story from beginning to end. I start that way, but inevitably I wind up drawing maps, conducting "interviews" with my characters, drawing up timelines of events--things like that. Once the first draft is done, I print out a copy and go through it with a fine-toothed comb. Then I go through that entire process again and again, until I'm convinced the story is as perfect as I can possibly make it. Most of you already know what a perfectionist I am, so you can imagine this takes a while. The longest I've taken between initial idea and first-draft manuscript is fifteen years. The shortest is one month.

Once I'm happy with the manuscript, I print more copies and show them to a very small, select group of people for outside opinions. (You know who you are.) These people are called "beta readers." Their job is to give their thoughts, undiluted, as harsh as they need to be, on what works and what doesn't. Then they give the manuscripts back to me so I can plug their edits in.

But that's the easy part.

Once I have a full manuscript, the hunt begins. I need somewhere to sell the story, and/or someone to sell it for me--i.e. a literary agent. There are a handful of places I look--AgentQuery.com has listings for agents, DuoTrope's Digest has publishers, and The Writer's Market has both, all searchable by genre and word count. I start making my list with those places, then narrow it down by doing a rudimentary background check on Preditors & Editors and AbsoluteWrite.net. Most of these places are in the links list on the right column of this blog.

Then comes the dreaded Query. A query letter is the aspiring writer's version of a resume--you summarize your story in one or two short paragraphs, making it catchy and attention-grabbing like the blurb on the background cover of a book, along with your previous publication credits if you have any. Some people require the first few pages, first chapter, first five chapters of the manuscript as well, and also a "synopsis," which is kind of like a query but much, much worse. The hope with the query is that you'll hook someone who will ask you for a "partial"--a decent-size chunk of the manuscript--and then the full manuscript, and ultimately offer represenation.

What happens after that? Well, you sell books, that's what. Hopefully. Writing the query is as far as I've gotten in this process myself. The only reason for this is I'm still waiting to get exactly one manuscript back from one of my betas. So I haven't actually sent the query anywhere yet, but I have one polished and ready for when that time comes.