Tred Softly on My Dreams

I’m going to pause just for a moment or two before I continue with the posts I had planned for the 25th anniversary because I think I need to comment a little on something else that has cropped up.

Those of you who are trying to become published writers will know that the big writing for Presents Contest that has been running over on I heart Presents has come to an end and the winners – four of them, two winners and two runners up – have been announced. If you’ve been over there as I’m sure many of you have, then you’ll have noticed the furore that has broken out because two of the winners – the two writing chapters aimed at Modern Romance – have been published before.

No, I’m not going to discuss the legalities and the rules and regulations involved in that decision here. For one thing I haven’t had time to really check out the rules and for another I think it’s rude and unprofessional to comment – and even ruder to shout and scream on any blog – before the editors have had a chance to check things through and make their comments on this. That is an official decision. But all I will say is that in a huge publishing firm with offices in London, New York and Toronto, with thousands of individual authors it’s all too easy for names not to be recognised so until there is an official statement throwing accusations and shouting the odds is not the way to go.

But there is one point I want to take issue with. And that’s the idea that as published authors – whether with one, four, or as in my case 57 titles behind you - the job of writing a book, getting it past an editor and achieving that wonderful feeling of acceptance and scheduling actually gets any easier or less stressful. Or that published authors don’t recall just how it felt to want that success so desperately and the sheer nail-biting anxiety we went through to get there.

Because we do. Some authors grow confidence. Some of us just grow a slightly tougher skin. Some of us know that we’ve done this before, we’ll probably manage to do it again. But there’s the emphasis on that ‘probably’. I know I find the moment of sending off a novel every bit as terrifying now as I did way back in 1984 when I was new to this. I’ve already mentioned how I’ve stumbled along the way - and there’s more to come because, believe me, it wasn’t ‘get one book bought and you’re home and dry- no problems after that’. I’ll talk about that more when I come to my second title Game of Hazard. One thing I will say here is that as I’ve always pointed out, one a book is on the shop shelves, it isn’t dripping in the blood sweat and tears that went into getting it there. And many books take that blood sweat and tears. The first thing an author has to learn is how to take editing – criticism, revisions, rewrites . . . We can all write easily for ourselves, turning that into a publishable book is another matter. I know I’ve been there – and believe me every drop of blood and sweat, every tear is remembered as if it was yesterday. It’s just like giving birth – you forget the pain afterwards. Until you have to go through it all again.

And because an author has learned to take editing in one particular line of fiction it doesn’t necessarily mean that she is now a polished and proficient successful author in any and every other line. Any advice help and criticism can be a great help but what works for, say a sci-fi story wouldn’t work for Modern/Presents. I regularly critique for the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme but I always always remember that I am not an editor. An editor’s decision is final. An editor’s decision is the one that matters when judging if a book is to be published or not. One person on the I Heart Blog says she paid for a critique of her story – I’m sorry, but that doesn’t guarantee that it was actually what the editors were looking for. Even if the critiquer had knowledge of the line.

Putting aside the whos whats wherefores and whys of the reasons the winners named were chosen, the fact will remain that they wrote the best entries, in the opinion of the editors who read all the other entries. No matter how good any other individual thought their submission was, it is that judgement that matters. And as to the comments that the contest was for aspiring authors – well, all those winners were aspiring Presents authors. Everyone who entered the contest was an aspiring author – else why would they enter it? The fact that someone has never been published before and has been trying for who knows how long doesn’t give them a moral right to be published, nor will it make their entry a better submission. For this particular contest at this particular time, against these other particular entrants.

I have never ever in my writing life won a single contest. Not one. I’ve had a couple of mentions on a short-list, but that’s it. And that doesn’t mean that my writing isn’t worth a damn or that I should just give up right now because other people are winning them and they are multi-published/have won many contests before/ know another editor in another office/.work with another editor in another company . . . .

When I work with ‘New’ authors. Unpublished authors, ‘wannabe’ or ‘gonnabe’ authors in my courses, workshops, critiquing for the RNA etc I am always always aware of the fact that I am dealing in two things:

1. I am dealing with someone’s dreams. Writing is like that. Our books are part of opurselves., We put a lot of ourselves into them – we ‘bleed’ a little on to the page. They are our ‘babies’ and we send them out into the hard cruel world of publishing and hope they will be taken up and nurtured. A rejection doesn’t feel like a rejection for the story, it feels like a rejection of us. It’s personal.

2. The need to be professional. Because there is no point at all in doing a critique if I’m not going to tell the truth. I don’t want to hurt, I don’t want to destroy someone’s dreams – but as a professional I do need to put on my critic’s hat and say what’s not working, where things are going wrong. And I’ll also say where things are going right. Because that is the only way that I feel I can help.

There were 544 entries to the Presents writing contest. Each and every one of them was submitted by an individual. Nothing came through an agent or from another editor. How many other publishers will l give that sort of opportunity? And each and every one of those submissions was read and considered by the editorial team.

So – speaking purely from the writing point of view – the winners were the best, the ones the editors saw most potential in. And the other considerations don’t affect that.

And the prize is to work with an editor for a year. That does not guarantee publication, it does not guarantee a future writing career. Some of the past winners have succeeded in writing a publishable novel – other haven’t (yet). I met Lynn Raye Harris in San Francisco at RWA when she had won the first such contest. She was struggling with revisions or revisions and worrying that this meant she was a failure. It didn’t. It meant that she had come hard up against the realities of a writing career – it isn’t just ‘churning out’ story after story but it’s writing and rewriting and revising and polishing until the damn thing works. And very few books spring fully-formed and perfect from the keyboard. I know, I can count the number of mine that have on very few fingers.

In a field of over 500 entries, even with 4 winners and runners-up, there was going to be a huge number of disappointed entrants. But if those entrants are going to convince themselves that they were badly done to, that the winners won because of some thing other than the fact that they wrote great entries, they are fooling themselves. Those winners won becuase what they wrote put them at the top of the pile..

But that doesn’t mean that the huge majority who didn’t win are the opposite of winners – losers. That’s not how this works. Four submissions were chosen because of the potential they held. There will be others, tens, dozens – hundreds maybe who came close but not close enough. Some will get great feedback, some, like some of the NWS writers I’ve commented on, will be disappointed and feel down. But none of this means that as writers you’re dead. That you can never ever try again. That your manuscript – or the next one – or the one after that – can’t ever achieve publication.

It simply means that this one was not the best in a very, very big field. And thinking that someone belongs to a ‘sisterhood’, isn’t pleased ‘enough’ to have won, hasn’t struggled enough to earn their winning place , or has some special entrée into the world you so want to enter is putting on blinkers so that you can’t see the real road ahead of you. Which is to look at what the winners wrote and see why they won. To look at the comments on your own work and see how it applies to that, what you can learn from it. To dust yourself off, pick yourself up and start all over again.

I started out in this writing life as someone who longed, hoped, dreamed, struggled, tried, failed, tried again. I was told by every sensible adult, parents, teachers etc that I would never succeed as a writer and I should stop dreaming of it. Did that stop me? No. And nor did the missteps, the rejections, the disappointments on the way. I still remember how that hurt so I’m not for one moment thinking that what I’m saying is easy. But If there’s one thing I have learned in the 25 years and more I’ve been trying for publication/writing for publication, it’s that I can never ever guarantee that any advice I give will, actually result in you being published.

But there’s one thing I can guarantee that will STOP you from being published. And that is that if you give in, give up – and convince yourself that it was all those other forces, reasons and excuses why you never succeeded.

In my life as a writer I have met so many wonderful ‘wannabes’ - whose determination and courage turned them first into ‘gonnabes’ and then into published authors whose wonderful books line my shelves alongside mine.
As they say – a successful writer is one who picks themselves up one more time than they are knocked back. I know those knock backs hurt – I’ve been there, and wear the scars with pride. They are part of the learning process. Without them I wouldn’t be where I am.

But learning from the knock backs is the only way to grow.

Good luck to all you wannabe/gonnabes out there – I really hope you achieve your dreams. Maybe not with the fanfare and trumpets that winning this particular contest might bring. But as the latest newly signed Presents/Modern Romance author Maisey Yates knows - that success is just as sweet no matter which way it comes.

Go for it! And if you do achieve success, I hope you’ll come back and tell me about it.