Today's guest is actress and author Melanie Smith, whose book Unfinished Business deals with trauma, grief, heartbreak and loss. Melanie joined me to talk about small and complex traumas, trauma reactions, and the shame that creatives are often made to feel in a capitalistic society.
What I’ve Learned Along the Way
By: Polly Holyoke
I’ve been writing and selling books for over twenty-five years, which means I’ve been lucky enough to work in my sweatpants and pjs long before COVID made working remotely so popular. I do have a new middle grade fantasy series out from Viking Children’s Books this month, and Skyriders’ publication has given me an excellent opportunity to pause and take stock. I’ve learned a great deal about the publishing business over the past decades, and these are just some of the things I wish I could have told a younger, greener me decades ago.
Be kind, share and give. People I helped along the way turned around and helped me, sometimes in the most unexpected ways. One debut author I’d met online was attending the same conference I was, but he had no dinner plans. I invited him to join me and my friends, and he has gone on to become spectacularly successful. Now he is wonderful about blurbing my books. A mentee I helped with her romance writing turned around and helped create striking, professional sell sheets for me. I always send handwritten thank you notes to the librarians who host me at their schools, and in turn, they often send me wonderful testimonials I can use on my website or line up more visits for me.
Join professional writing organizations. There is SO much you can learn from folks farther along in their careers than you are. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel! For years I was writing sensitive, well-written and well-researched historical romances, but they were WAY TOO LONG to sell. Once I joined Romance Writers of America and won a critique from a published author, she set me straight. I trimmed 30,000 words from my manuscript and made my first sale three months later. Also, writing can be a lonely, solitary business, and attending conferences and chapter meetings gives you a chance to meet fellow writers who share your goals and friends who share your passion and ambition.
Be patient and persistent. Very few writers become successes overnight. Very few writers sell the first project they submit. You’ve probably heard some of these stories. Kathryn Stockett was rejected by 60 agents before the 61st agreed to represent The Help. Madeline L’Engle’s classic story A Wrinkle in Time was rejected by 26 publishers, and Kate DiCamillo’s Newbery-winning Because of Winn Dixie was rejected 473 times.
You have to be submitting your work to agents and publishers, and submitting frequently, to increase your odds of making a sale. Luck does play a factor. You never know when your work may hit an editor’s computer right after the marketing team asked for more school stories or more fantasies. Whenever I have a project out on submission, I already have the next project polished up and ready to send to my agent.
Fortune favors the brave. This old Latin proverb is particularly true for professional writers. You can’t sell your work if you don’t take a chance and send it out into the world. I know a dozen fine writers who never actually sold books (and they probably could have) because their projects were never finished or never good enough, in their eyes. Deep down inside, some of these talented people were so afraid of failure, they never took the risk of trying to sell their work.
Treat writing like a profession. If you take your writing seriously, then your family will as well. You have to protect your writing time and set boundaries. Spouses and kids can be trained (after some effort) to respect the time you set aside to write. If you know you write best in the morning, then find ways to protect those morning hours. Rachel Caine, the author of the wonderful Great Library series and sixty-two other books, used to get up before her day job and her family to write for two hours before going to work. If it’s important, you can find the time.
Never stop working on your craft. You can always get better and learn from other writers and teachers. Some of the most talented authors I know still go to writing conferences and classes. They read books and blog posts on craft, and they are continually finding new ways to improve their writing.
Know your goals and why you write. I’ve always written to be published and to make money, and that works for me. I recently joined a small-town writing group where most of the folks don’t wish to be published. But they are having a great time writing their memoirs and their thrillers to share with their friends and family, and that’s a valid reason to be writing as well.
You need to LOVE writing! Publishing is a brutal business, and I often think it’s sad and ironic that the very sensitivity one needs to be a fine writer also leaves authors open to despair and depression. You may write a wonderful book, and yet it is quite possible that it will sell poorly or be ignored by your industry. Right now, many terrific books in my field of children’s literature are failing because some school districts are requiring (thanks to all those book challenges out there) that a book have at least two positive reviews from the biggies in our industry: Library School Journal, Kirkus, The Horn Book or VOYA. And yet those magazines don’t have as many reviewers as they used to, and some authors are lucky to receive a single review, much less two.
Finally, be kind to yourself. Don’t compare yourself to peers who first debuted when you did. Some are going to be far more successful than you are. Others are going to be less successful, but writing is not a race, and it is not a zero-sum game. Envying others can only make you unhappy and less productive in the long run. Take pride in every book you finish. Be proud of every excellent sentence you write, and do your best to enjoy the journey.
Polly Holyoke is the award-winning author of the middle grade sci/fi Neptune Trilogy (Disney/Hyperion) and the new children’s fantasy series, Skyriders, releasing from Viking Children’s Books this month. When she’s not tapping away on her computer, Polly enjoys skiing, hiking, and camping in the mountains.
L.S. Stratton on Reading Your Reviews
It’s time for a new interview series… like NOW. No really, actually it’s called NOW (Newly Omniscient Authors). This blog has been publishing since 2011, and some of the earlier posts feel too hopeful dated. To honor the relaunch of the site, I thought I’d invite some of my past guests to read and ruminate on their answers to questions from oh-so-long-ago to see what’s changed between then and now.
Today’s guest for the NOW is L.S. Stratton, author of Not So Perfect Strangers, which releases on March 28
Has how you think (and talk) about writing and publishing changed, further into your career?
I’m definitely warier of any hard-and-fast rules when it comes to writing and publishing. I’ll give a couple of examples.
“Don’t open a novel with the weather or with someone waking up.” This was drilled into me by books and blogs on writing—until I saw several bestselling novels do that very thing.
“Self-publishing isn’t real publishing.” I had my first short story published when I was in college, which was about two decades ago. This was back when self-publishing was treated like it was subpar or not “real” publishing and authors were discouraged from doing it if they wanted to be taken seriously. Now we know that was hilariously off base. Those who were smart enough to ignore the naysayers and get into the market early were able to build platforms, huge careers, and even have an impact on trends in traditional publishing. (Fifty Shades of Grey and The Martian, anyone?)
Let’s talk about the balance between the creative versus the business side of the industry. Do you think of yourself as an artiste or are you analyzing every aspect of your story for marketability? Has that changed from your early perspective?
I have too much imposter syndrome to think of myself as an "artiste", but I try my best to take creative risks in my writing. Some authors have their formulas: plot points or characters that tend to reappear in some incarnation in their novels. I’ve done it too. When I used to write romances under another pen name, I would hit a certain number of love scenes per book. I think embracing those formulas is the business side to writing. You do it either because it worked before and/or it fulfills readers’ expectations of your work. But even though you can say with relative confidence that you’ve mastered how to make a good spaghetti or pancake, eventually you’re going to get bored with cranking out spaghetti or pancakes. You want to try something different, to challenge yourself. That’s the creative side of me. I have to give in to it occasionally, or I’d get bored with writing.
The bloom is off the rose… what’s faded for you, this far out from debut?
Reviews. (And this is coming from someone who has written reviews and gotten a starred review before.) I understand that they’re necessary. They can help build buzz for books in some instances. But I used to see them as critical feedback I should definitely listen to. I’d try to take them very seriously, but they could be so subjective and all over the map; the same book would get a review saying the pace was too slow, and another reviewer would describe it as fast-paced. I eventually understood that this was more for fellow readers than for the authors.
You release your book into the world, and what people do with or take from it after that point, is out of your control. I’m not saying to disregard feedback or critique. That would be foolish. I value my editors’ notes and my beta readers. But beyond that, I’ve learned not to take reviews too seriously or at least try not to take them too seriously.
Likewise, is there anything you’ve grown to love (or at least accept) that you never thought you would?
I’ve learned to accept or be at peace with my writing career and realized that sometimes, treading water rather than making big waves isn’t so bad. I never got the splashy debut and envied the writers who got that opportunity. But I have seen authors who got splashy debuts, that got the big burst on the book scene, and they kind of . . . disappeared. I don’t know why. Maybe sales with their second book didn’t match the sales of their debut so their publishers elected not to exercise their first-option clause, or they knew as writers they were “here for a good time, but not for a long time,” as they say.
That’s why I tell debut authors that even though a huge emphasis is put on the monster-sized advance or being a bestseller or landing the big book clubs, it doesn’t mean your career is over if you don’t get that. And I’ve seen authors who were midlist for years gradually move up to bestsellers after building their readership with consistent, quality work and finally landing the right publisher that was willing to give them the marketing and PR budget to help them excel. Being an author is challenging enough; don’t put additional pressure on yourself.
And lastly, what did getting published mean for you and how was it changed (or not changed!) your life?
When I first got published, I’ll be honest . . . I took the whole experience for granted. I was 19 and a short story I wrote in two weeks and submitted to a writing contest on a whim, landed me my first book contract and put my work on store shelves nationally. I then took a break from writing to finish my degree and start working in journalism and I assumed it would be just as easy to get back into fiction writing and get another work published. Wrong! So wrong! I got rejected so many times, I can’t even count. The feedback was brutal. But that humbling experience made me appreciate it even more when I finally got another book published. I have respect for the writing process and my job as an author that I didn’t have two decades ago. This isn't a hobby that I can just pick up and put down; it’s a craft I’ve decided to dedicate my life toward.
L.S. Stratton is a NAACP Image Award-nominated author and former crime newspaper reporter who has written more than a dozen books under different pen names in just about every genre from thrillers to romance to historical fiction. She currently lives in Maryland with her husband, their daughter, and their tuxedo cat.