Leaky Brains, Stat Madness, and Winners

I *know* there is something I have to do on February 24th, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it is. I feel like it’s a party or some other event. Does this ever happen to you? If one of the readers of this blog knows what it is, can they please contact me? It’s driving me crazy.

Regular readers of the blog know how annoyed I get by the whole “statistics” method of career planning. My go-to quote on the issue is care of Tor editor Theresa Nielsen Hayden:

Aspiring writers are forever asking what the odds are that they’ll [sell their books]. That’s the wrong question. If you’ve written a book that surprises, amuses, and delights the readers, and gives them a strong incentive to read all the pages in order, your chances are very good indeed. If not, your chances are poor.

A few days ago, agent Kristin Nelson (who is not blogging anonymously, despite what certain newspaper articles recently insinuated) posted about how many authors don’t sell their first manuscripts. More often than not, they don’t sell until somewhere around their fourth manuscript. (Or, you know, their 36th.) The point of the post is, as she said, “you shouldn’t give up or lose faith if novel number one doesn’t go anywhere.” But a bunch of folks in the comments thread took it to mean (and I quote): “So, in other words, it’s not even worth my time (or anyone’s time) to even bother shopping novels #1 through #3 around. Just write them and move on and forget ever trying to shop them.”

Um, no. What she said (and again, I quote) is: “you shouldn’t give up or lose faith if novel number one doesn’t go anywhere.” Yes. I’m repeating it, as many times as it takes for it to sink in. I can tell you that it was most definitely worth my time to not only write and revise, but to shop all four of the novels I wrote before selling my first contract, and not only for the obvious reason that they may have sold. Quickly:

MS #1: Formed a relationship with an editor who invited me to submit to her again.
MS #2: Further cemented relationship with that editor, gave me experience handling editor-requested revisions.
MS #3: More editor-requested revisions, in-depth work with an editor, taught me the value of marketability in pitching, helped me hone my query-writing skills, showed the agent I’d later sign with my writing chops, garnered request to submit to said agent again
MS #4: Formed relationships with several agents, some of whom eventually passed but invited me to submit again, taught me more about synopsis and pitch-writing.

And that’s not even including the rejection I received for a proposal where the editor kindly suggested that though the writing was great, maybe I wasn’t exactly a romance writer. Brilliant woman, she.

So it was worth my time, and I learned a lot from it, and I don’t think I would have known exactly what to do when I had written the proposal for Secret Society Girl if I hadn’t formed these contacts. Because I’d dealt with certain agents before, I felt comfortable writing them and saying, “Hi, remember when I pitched you that other project and you said if I ever had anything else, to contact you right away? Well, here it is.” It’s all worth it. It all teaches you something. And, when you publish, it makes no difference whether it was your first manuscript or your fiftieth. It’s still your debut.

So! No more useless stats. Your first book is no one else’s. Neither is your fourth. Neither is your agent, or your publisher, or your enormous film deal with Steven Spielberg. Write your books.

And if you don’t believe me, because you’re one of those lovely people who think all published authors are out there lying to you* (or you just don’t believe me because it’s hard to let this go, and as I say here, there’s a good chance you feel that way and I sure as heck did), my friend Erica just posted a fabulous pep talk on the subject as well. Everyone should go read her blog post right this very minute, because it’s brilliant and inspiring, and Erica (a Miss Snark Crapometer Winner) is not going to be unpublished for long.

Plus, she’s really cute.

Okay, let’s give away some books. I thought I was going to have special news today, but I don’t, so blah. Maybe next week? And, in the meantime, the winner of this week’s giveaway is…

HEATHER HARPER

Wow, Heather. You tend to get lucky on my blog. Or are you just playing the stats? 😉

Have a great weekend, everyone!