If I Was To Do It Over...

When you depend on an agent's approval for your success, you do some really dumb things. I've written three full-length novels (one now unpublished) and when I first set out on this writing path, I was convinced that not only was trade publishing the only way to go, but that it would be easy. 

When I was revising The Apple's blurb yesterday, I pulled up the original query letter I'd sent off to agents, and wow, it was terrible. No wonder the manuscript was summarily rejected. Trying too hard to squeeze oneself into a too-tight box only guarantees failure. I'd read all the rules about querying, the how-to's and what-not-to's; so much so that I became paranoid, and my query turned out as dull and flat as it could possibly be. Even my personal details at the end sounded apathetic.

Then there's the novel itself. I can't even count the variations of its opening I played around with, and the one I finally settled on isn't good. I pulled up the manuscript yesterday to refamiliarize myself with the story (in order to rewrite the blurb) and the opening is boring as hell. The one thing I haven't forgotten about that novel is that I tried to formulate an opening I thought agents would approve of. And instead of making it intriguing, I murdered it. 

If I was to rewrite The Apple today (I'm not going to) it would be different and better. I'm a more confident writer now and I don't play to others' expectations. PRO TIP: You're never going to get an agent anyway, so write to please yourself.

I whine a lot about self-publishing and my lack of success, but the best part of being my own boss is that I can write what I want.  

I used to pull up the Absolute Write forums a couple of times a day. It was the only place I knew of to learn about querying (and to some extent, writing), but it slowly dawned on me that its inhabitants are by-the-book authoritarians. And the vast majority of them are unpublished. The site has a sub-forum titled, Successful Queries (it's not often posted in!) and those queries that snagged an agent didn't follow the strict rules at all. Contrary to the ruler-snapping nuns who are free with advice, the successful writers went their own way. (I just snuck a peek at the site and those nuns are still at it.)

The Apple is still a good story, even though its opening sucks. But if I was to read any of my published books, I'd find things that make me cringe, which is why I don't read them. When I was composing my blog post about "endings", I pulled up New Kaitlyn and scrolled to the end. What do you know? I found a very weird turn of phase that didn't make sense to me, even though I was the one who wrote it. So I revised that line and re-uploaded the manuscript. I can't do that continuously. It would be never-ending.

Looking at The Apple's opening at least proves to me how much I've grown as a writer.