Baby Doe has been kicking around for 35 years. In workshops, summer programs (Squaw Community of Writers), with hired editors (Tom Jenks), extension courses (Harvard, UCB), with writing groups (Founder, SF Literary Sluts).With writing buds, with developmental editors, with conferences (SF Writers Conference). You get the idea. You may appreciate that I have more stamina than talent. Refuting that, I’ve published short stories. Three other novels are half written, one other novel is written, polished, worked and reworked, and finally agented. But they couldn't find a publisher for the sucker. So I decided to go back to go. Publish my first novel, my baby. In prior posts, you can see a honed query and logline, Critique if you will. The game is not over, but this week I caved, and signed with (what looks like a very good) hybrid publishing company. In the mean time I will continue to query agents, but you can sense my feeling of futility in a prior post (Screw 'em). If an agent strikes the bait, I pay only for work done at the VGHPC). In the next post I (may) share the itemized bill from the VGHPC, not including previous developmental edits, (all of which insisted that I follow the classic three act model described well by Michael Hauge. No doubt his advice has made him rich <https://www.storymastery.com/classes-keynotes/>,
Agents and publishers have drunk deep on the kooIaid, and I have no doubt that many best sellers follow the program, but where’s the magic in following Ikea directions to construct a novel. Where’s Chabon? Where’s Karl Ove Knausgard? Either of them can write about anything, anything, and make it fascinating. With the VGHPC, I will not have a best seller, but by Dec. 31, 2020, I will have a published novel. Besides whose first novel ever sells (Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens?—not with that title).
Now it’s late, so I’ll leave you be with some good advice.
The best way to find mistakes and typos is to hit “send.”
And the corollary from agents who I have known—one of the biggest mistakes of new authors is premature submission. Sounds sexual, and by so saying, I hope seo is paying attention.
And to show that I follow my own advice, I’m hitting the publish button now
