posted
Check out publishing companies' web sites. They give you requirements for manuscripts and stuff.
Posts: 9945 | Registered: Sep 2002
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What do you want to get published? Short stories, a novel, non-fiction? The process is different for each of those, and can differ a little by genre too.
For short stories, you mail your precious to every magazine, from the best to the lowest. Don't scare yourself into sending it to the lower tier magazines first. If you are pretty good, they'll snatch you up. You won't know then if you could have been published in a bigger magazine.
With novels, whether you submit to an agent or a publisher, you never send in the whole manuscript. First, you usually send a query letter that has a pitch. They may then ask you for sample chapters and a synopsis. If they like that, you send the whole manuscript.
With non-fiction, you often actually don't write the book first. Instead, you do some research and query. If they like your idea, then you do a lot of research and write. There are a few other things about this that I didn't really absorb because I don't intend to sell non-fiction just now.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Oh, and something I forgot. Going to the publishers' sites is a good thing. The guidelines are different for every one. Jim Baen, for instance, dislikes working with agents. But other publishers won't even look at a query letter without an agent.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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Here's another question for everyone. There are hundreds, probably thousands of "really good" unpublished authors out there. What makes them different from "really good" published authors? Luck?
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posted
AIM is the instant messenger program we tend to use more than any other (AOL Instant Messenger) but we do have Parachat if ya ever wanna talk w/o AIM.
Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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What part of Salem? I served there for 6 months. 3 in West Salem and 3 in North East Salem. Its an awesome place. I hope I can go back one of these days.
Thank goodness its not too far... Posts: 24 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Listen to Amka. She's not a smart-@ss like me.
Amka - Do you visit Salem regularly? I have this image of you keeping it all hush-hush when you visit out of fear of PDX Hatrackers catching wind of it. Posts: 7600 | Registered: Jan 2001
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"There are hundreds, probably thousands of 'really good' unpublished authors out there. What makes them different from 'really good' published authors?"
Publication. Seriously.
But this is more of a distinction than you might at first assume, because here's what that REALLY means:
1) They finished something.
2) They sent it to someone. The "someone" they chose and the format in which they sent it depended on the type of thing they finished, and the preferences of the publisher in question.
3) They probably sent it to MULTIPLE people, and learned to cope with rejection, until someone finally liked what they wrote.
Unless you successfully completely ALL of those steps, you will never be published. How far have you gotten?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
1. Write a story on a bar napkin or whatever scrap paper you have around -- I like to use wrapping that comes with individually-wrapped toilet paper rolls 2. Photocopy said napkin or other paper product
Voila! You're published!
I haven't been published yet because I have problems with step 2.
Posts: 3423 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I finished "somethings" before, but that was over 2 years ago and I've found that I don't like those any more. I suppose I'll have to start over on other "somethings."
At least I think I'll be able to handle step three: rejection. If anyone's been an LDS missionary before, you'll know what I'm talking about. Or, if you've turned them away yourself. Posts: 24 | Registered: Aug 2003
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What Tom said, but I would put it more succinctly.
Perseverence.
Ralphie,
The last time I was there was in Christmas of 2001. However, there is a very good chance that we will be going up there this September. Anyone up for a get together?
Ryan, did you happen to know the Fullmers? They are in the Salem 6th? ward, I think. NE. My mom is the RS president.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Oh yeah. I was mistaking NE for SE. My parents are in the SE. But we did used to go to the Salem 3rd Ward, and the Lancaster Deaf Branch used to go to that building too.
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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No one's telling you to have patience, Ryan. They're telling you to work your butt off, get something written, and then work your butt off trying to sell it.
Unless you think the Manuscript Fairy is going to swing through the offices of Doubleday and drop a big, juicy bestseller into an editor's lap -- with your name on it -- patience is the LEAST of your worries. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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But, ya, I went to the Lancaster building... I think. Its been about a year and a half since I was there....
Posts: 24 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:They're telling you to work your butt off, get good something written, and then work your butt off trying to sell it.
Emphasis added.
I haven't written anything nearly so impressive as to demand attention from anyone save my dearest friends. I still believe that if I write something worth publishing, finding a taker will be a cinch.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Ralphie, You just blew all your credibilty ! I don't think you should be telling me to be nice to n00bs anymore. Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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In an ideal world, Irami, you'd be right -- but I think a quick visit to any bookstore will confirm that you don't HAVE to write something good to get published. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Tom, I wasn't clear with my sufficient and necessary conditions. If I wrote Dr. Zhviago, The Poisonwood Bible, or even The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, I could have an offer letter on my desk in under a year. I'm making the argument that writing a wonderful story is indeed sufficient for publishing.
I'm not saying that it is at all necessary. Sloshing through the mire at your local bookstore is enough to prove that. I just don't think that anyone has a right to complain that their drivel isn't getting published just because other people's feces is.
posted
Incidentally, I just spent about three hours at the Tor (TOR) website and read something that discomfeted (sp) me.
How do people feel about third person omni-present? One of my long stories makes use of this occaisionally. In my opinion it is always clear who is think, and it never switches between people in the same room, only between people in different places. The switch always tells the same story about the same person. If the character is presented suddenly as first person, it may be because the main character is incapacitated, or important things happen silmultaneously.
Sometimes I find this irritating in books, but not all the time. I want to know what other people think about third person omnipresent (but only occaisionally) writing.
(By the way, I'm not changing it unless I get a superhuman reason, because I like it that way and it's really the only way that it works.)
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Salutations in order, good people. This is my first post here at Hatrack, but I am an old hand at lurking and also, for bonus points, I was at EnderCon last year. So I'm quasi-legit, baby. And I ain't no newbie 'cuz I was running a 1200-baud BBS in, like, the late eighties. It had an animated ANSI title page and was up for a whole week at least. No 8-bit 'WaREz' on it though. Rock on.
Teschi, with your leave, here's my tendentious take on 3rd-person omniscent: It's so useful and convenient, this power to slip in and out of characters' heads to advance narrative points that would otherwise require all kinds of funky machinations in limited 3rd-person. So darn functional! But also so hard to do right, in my experience.
May I guess that you're slightly uneasy about your hard-wrought work being "disqualified" from some arbitrary PublisherLand Marque o' Quality because you unknowingly broke some compositional rule that you've just now stumbled across, happenstance? (I know that feeling well myself. Oh yes... ) And, what's more, *everyone* but you knows this secret rule and will belly-laugh upon skimming your stuff? I've felt like that, all worked up about, say, my overuse of proper nouns and underuse of pronouns. And then my nonstandard use of perfect tenses. And commas. And so on. Those around me threatened to force-feed me Valium, I was so grammatically insecure -- all because I read some articles about "Never do This or That because you Won't Get Published, only Ridiculed by your Olympian Betters." Of course, nobody but me saw these glaring problems in my manuscript. To smart, casual readers, it was fine. To me, my story was criminal foolery written by the vilest of poseurs.
Back to the topic: The concern, maybe, is that you use 3rd-person omniscent sparingly, perhaps as more of a sporadic device than a proper story-wide convention. That's what may cause the 'jarring' effect that gets you worried. Especially as omniscent traditionally uses no line break or section break to preface this new head we're occupying all of a sudden.
In my writing, I've often found that omniscent can feel phony when it butts in and clashes with a story's dominant tone. It's perfect for when the story has a decided, independent narrator relating the tale as it unspools. But if you're using omniscent only occasionally -- does that mean you're in limited POV for all the rest of the story? Knowing that would help.
Ah, I must say that I am biased -- I love the good old limited-3rd with clearly delinated POV switches.
Mercy me, I'm re-reading my post and I sound like such a monotonous schlub. If your story is good, it will be good regardless of what rules it breaks. One thing to keep in mind about editing yourself, though, IMHO: You can have an already-great scene, okay, and when you revise it to clear up POV issues or continuity problems, one of two things may happen:
A) you screw it up and ruin your groove - or - B) you do some pruning and sprucing to this already-great scene, and then you re-read it with these changes, and *slap!* this scene that already felt great is revealed as suddenly, totally, wonderfully brilliant. As are you, naturally.
I like (B) better... even sour writers can experience euphoria when they guide a page to the light.
Best to you Hatrackers, Jon
Posts: 1 | Registered: Aug 2003
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I have been thinking about it, but for the moment, the ominiscent is staying in, because I like it that way.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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