How to Get Through Horrifying Process of Literary Agent Submissions
I have reached a critical point in the list of orderly steps in the long march to publication which I have been given by others and have dutifully written down. They are/were as follows:
1. Write the shitty first draft
2. Read it and make less shitty
3. Send it to Kind & Wise Mentory Editor Who Has Read James Joyce
4. Laugh and cry as you read her Kind & Wise suggestions; take 99% of them. Redraft.
5. Send new draft to 28-Year-Old Editor Who Doesn’t Remember President Nixon But Is Much Smarter Than I
6. Enjoy life with no novel to think about and write songs and poems while 28 y-o reads and edits draft.
7. Receive edits from 28-y-o and cry for a month. Decide you are not a novelist. Pick yourself up off the carpet and have a Zoom call with her in which she tells you she had a very hard time editing your novel because it was practically perfect.
8. Wonder if you are crazy.
9. Take 69% of her suggestions and finish the draft.
10. Write a synopsis which is harder than writing the novel
11. Write the query letter which is harder than writing the synopsis
12. Make a list of agents you’d love to work with by finding names in the acknowledgements pages of your favorite novels. Cross off the dead ones.
February 22, 2024
look at you slowing down…wrist guard on play your guitar…you are after all pure insperation. Sheri
beauty in the rawest form…thank you Nerissa.