When do you move on?

Neither. You keep submitting and you keep writing. It's a business. No matter how much you love the first, others may not. Doesn't mean to give up on it. This business is so subjective you may or may not land a deal. Work on both, but don't edit the first any further. If it's good enough to submit, it's good enough to leave alone.

JJ

Captshady said:

I'm no where near this juncture, but I'm just curious. Let's say you've written a novel, and you submitted it all over, you got no bites, you re-edited this, you re-edited that, and nothing. How do you know when to just start working on the next novel, and forget all about the one you're submitting? What's the defining moment or event?

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You should have started writing your next novel already. (I started submitting my first novel in February 2004. I started on my new novel in April. I got an acceptance of the first novel in November.)


And why are you still reediting this and reediting that when you're already submitting? I think that's a really bad thing to do. Is that ms. ready yet? Or not?

Once I send a book out, I start writing the next one ASAP and never re-edit without a contract. I dislike editing enough that once I'm happy with it, there'd better be money involved if I'm going to do that work again.

I stop sending it around when it feels right to. No set time or submission number.

At any given time I have at least three ideas in varying stage of production.

I've shelved at least one novel, so my advice would be, "Don't worry about the current one, just the next one."

I remember a friend talking about a guy they grew up with who was a writer (amazing how these stories come out once you tell people what you do). He had written the great urban literary novel and was shopping it around. He'd written it in third person, first person, edited, re-edited, etc. But was getting rejections.

Hum...well...I said. My friend said the market was biased. I replied, maybe his piece isn't right for the market and said person should write another one.

Do you know what he said? He doesn't have another one.

I was dumbfounded. I thought everyone has more than one story to tell. You just got to find it. I could be wrong. But then again, how terrible would it be as a writer to finish your one story? You'd never write again.

Amy

Like someone said (I think it's Uncle Jim) -- you stop selling it until Hell won't have it.

Meanwhile, work on the next one!

She_wulf said:

Hum...well...I said. My friend said the market was biased. I replied, maybe his piece isn't right for the market and said person should write another one.

Do you know what he said? He doesn't have another one.

I was dumbfounded. I thought everyone has more than one story to tell. You just got to find it. I could be wrong. But then again, how terrible would it be as a writer to finish your one story? You'd never write again.

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Hasn't seemed to bother Harper Lee or Margaret Mitchell, among others.

My example isn't of the norm. But I wrote my first novel and got an agent in just under a year. It took us less than three weeks to secure a two-book deal with Random House. I worked my ass off in that year and it payed dividends. At the same time though, as soon as I submitted I had two short synopsis ready for the next projects and I started writing one. I am yet to edit the first book after submission. The ability we have is to write. We employ specialists for those other roles.

JJ

Well, I for one have many trunked novels under my belt. I can't describe other than to say that I fell out of love with those novels. I moved on as a writer and when I looked back, I saw the problems with them, trunked them and moved on.

I've only trunked one novel -- once Pocket Books stopped accepting Star Trek books from non-stable writers, this one had nowhere to go. However, I may one day rewrite it in my own milieu, so even this one isn't really dead.

If I like the book enough to finish it and polish it, I'm never giving up. When I run out of agents and publishers, I'll just lie in wait for a new one to stick up its timid head. Then, POUNCE!

Wasn't John Grisham's novel 'A Painted House' passed over by many before someone out there finally realized his brillance...? Just wondering.

DeleyanLee said:

Hasn't seemed to bother Harper Lee or Margaret Mitchell, among others.

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I think Margaret Mitchell had more than one book.
(from Wikipedia, that font of fun...)
"For decades it was thought that Mitchell had only ever written one complete novel. (In fact, periodically claims are made that she never wrote it at all due to the lack of any other published work by her). But in the 1990s, a manuscript by Mitchell of a novel entitled Lost Laysen was discovered among a collection of letters Mitchell had given in the early 1920s to a suitor named Henry Love Angel. The manuscript had been written in two notebooks in 1916. In the 1990s, Angel's son discovered the manuscript and sent it to the Road to Tara Museum, which authenticated the work. A special edition of Lost Laysen — a romance set in the South Pacific — was edited by Debra Freer, augmented with an account of Mitchell and Angel's romance including a number of her letters to him, and published by the Scribner imprint of Simon & Schuster in 1996."

Not to mention, she wrote biographies of prominent Civil war generals, articles, etc.

And...she never sought publication for Gone With the Wind.

(adding a bit about Harper Lee from Wiki too)
"Since publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee has granted almost no requests for interviews or public appearances, and with the exception of a few short essays, has published no further writings. She did work on a second novel for years, eventually filing it away unpublished.[citation needed] During the mid-1980s, she began a book of nonfiction about an Alabama serial murderer, but she put it aside when she was not satisfied.[citation needed] Her withdrawal from public life prompted unfounded speculation that new publications were in the works. Similar speculation followed the American writers J. D. Salinger and Ralph Ellison."

Just because an author got one book published doesn't mean they stopped writing.

I'll caveat this with the over generalization that Fiction writers will write more than one story. If the first doesn't sell, keep plugging away at getting it to sell, but write the next one...

Amy

And Harper Lee was working on her other books. She may have only one book published, but she definitely didn't just write one.

I sit corrected.

I agree with every word posted by those above me. If you want to stop being a self-described amateur, I suggest you re-read what has been said and spend time learning about the business of publishing and the art of writing -- that includes publishers, agents, submissions, and soooo much more. I don't know any other way to put it, as harsh as it sounds.

Captshady said:

...I was asking out of sheer curiosity, as to when you basically accept that your novel won't sell, and stop trying to sell it.

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Time and experience will help you make that call.

Everybody's first finished novel is their baby for a while. Heck, each novel becomes a snarling, hungry, time consuming monster if we let it. Writers end up falling in love with the darn things anyways.

Sell it until you fall out of love with it. Then let it sit a while and dust it off later. You might fall back in love with it. Or you might have learned new tricks, new techniques, grown as a writer and want to correct some flaws. It's a labor of love, dedication and work. No one person is entirely like another either so your breaking point may be different.

The main thing is distancing yourself from the work. Each rejection is not a rejection of you. It just doesn't work for the person/publishing house/critic, etc. you allowed to view your baby. Not everyone's kid is the next supermodel or Brad Pitt either. Roll with it. Kids, stories...they both have flaws. Rarely do the gems sparkle for all. At least you can edit your stories.

Heck, if I could trade my fifteen year old child in for another one like my eighteen year old, I'd probably do it right now. But I might (might, I said...she's driving me nuts) regret it later.


Amy