Your Journey

ZombieAte15 said:

Well, my journey has come a long way actually. I started writing ever since 5th grade, I always was fascinated on the way books were made, so I wanted to make books for me and my classmates to enjoy, yet only about 3 people really supported me. When I moved, I stopped for a while, and then on 7th grade I was gladly accepted in society and my best friend told me I should write stories(I showed her my early "book") and that I should aim for a publish. She introduced me to zombies, and ever since I fell in love with that subject lol. But of course there were a lot of hardships, like for example, I was a loner and unpopular, so I was really depressed about it. I guess I realized that popular nowadays is smoking and all that stuff teenagers my age do so I ignored my unpopularity. Then somehow someway I was now known as the kid that can 'gleak' and writing so I'm cool now. In 8th grade I began to get more serious about writing, and I almost didn't pass that grade because I was "Too distracted in writing in books" or "excessive reading." I remember clearly that they even got the principle to take my book away. So I'm currently writing my book. I have went through 3 "rough drafts." I write all my books in composition books, I usually finish about 4 composition books in one month. I also have a journal, but that's because when I'm old and wrinkly, my children can read all the things that i have done in my youth. I have about 7 diaries done. There have been more complications, but in time I will tell. So that's what I've done, and I'm currently in 9th grade AKA Freshman.

Click to expand...

Ahh, composition books!! Nothing is sweeter than a fresh new composition book, waiting for a story!
Keep at it, Freshman

My story is very much a WIP. Started writing poetry at 6 or 7 years old (my ma's got a box of my handwritten old poems under her bed) and at the age of 13 tried to write a Watership Down-style epic about squirrels. I don't remember a lot about it and I can't find the (stolen) exercise book I wrote it in.

During my mid-to-late teens I suffered badly with anxiety and depression and wrote truckloads of bad, angsty poetry as a form of therapy. Some of these poems still exist but will never see the light of day (anyone who's ever read my writing will be familiar with my bad habit of over-describing every little detail - cutting your teeth on angsty poetry tends to foster 'metaphor dependence')

From there, I started writing fanfiction - mainly because I didn't yet have the confidence in my own ability and imagination to go out and start writing my own thing. (I still write fanfic now - it's a good way of de-stressing when your WIP is getting all knotted and tangled. Keeps the writing muscles working.)

I didn't start writing seriously until just before I went to uni (I studied Creative Writing, although my focus at that time was still poetry.) The majority of what I wrote at that time was utter pants and isn't worth mentioning, although the course did show me that writing short stories and novels was actually more fun (and less angsty) than poetry.

In 2009 my health began to deteriorate, and I found myself spending long periods of time unable to do much more than sit on the sofa staring at the TV, which I hated. So I got myself a laptop and started writing. I never finished that novel but I will some day - I think I need to improve as a writer before tackling it. Since then, I've written a bunch of short stories, one of which I've had published, and am working on another novel. I don't suppose it'll be good enough for publishing but I hope it'll give me a solid enough foundation so that the next novel I write will be good enough. Maybe. I hope.

I've been writing since I was six years old (1992), but I wrote my first story at around ten (1996-97), told through pictures and captions. A few years later, I set myself the goal to get published. From '97 to '99, I wrote stories based on Star Trek, before I started developing my my own science fiction series. Between 1999 and 2004, I worked on this series of 60 short stories. I only got to #44 before I turned my focus to my current series, a spin-off of the previous series. During that time, I also wrote my first 50-page "novel". That was my first attempt at publication. In 2005, I started working on my Draconia series.

I was pretty determined. I don't recall ever thinking about giving up--I simply enjoyed it for what I was writing about. Of course, there were people who felt I should just chuck it. Namely, my mom. When I got my first rejection letter for my first Draconia book, she felt I was wasting my time. I didn't let that deter me. I just continued writing.

I took a few writing classes, but I mostly worked on my own, just reading other novels.

Not published yet. Unless you count a letter I wrote that was published in Antique Trader. In its entirety, no edits. And one of my chpts. was featured on a literary website as a good example of stream-of-consciousness writing. That's something, right?

I've written 4 novels (5 if you count the mess I wrote at 19) and am working on my fifth. I have high hopes for my 4th and my WIP. Semi-high hopes for number 2 and 3. Baby-semi medium high hopes for the novella in number 1.

So, not "officially" published, but hoping. That's something, right?

For me, writing was part of the overall creations process that included artworks and music. Around puberty, I was obsessed with anime (this was back in the 80's), manga, sci-fi/fantasy novels and illustration, comic books, etc. And since I had always been good at drawing, I naturally always combined artwork and storytelling. But because English was my second language, my actual prose ability was terrible, so I placed more emphasis on my artistic development in terms of skill. But my artworks always served the purpose of stories, as I continued to write treatments and screenplays, and sometimes prose too.

I then became a professional comic book artist/writer/creator, and I got to work on my own creator-owned comic book series for about four years--that was my first taste of being published and having a following. I thoroughly enjoyed telling my own stories on my own terms, but it was nearly impossible to make a living doing indie comics, so I got into the video game industry to survive.

But before I defected to the video game industry, I had also ventured into the music industry (another one of my passions), and I played in a band, wrote songs for popstars in Taiwan, and almost signed a record deal as a solo artist. But the politics of the music industry turned me off and I left it behind.

During my years of working in the video game industry as an artist/art director, I improved a lot in my prose writing, and started to take it a lot more seriously, to the point that I had aspirations to write novels. But it was mostly "write when inspired" and I would slack off for long periods of time when I didn't feel good about my writing. This went on for years, during which I also ventured into filmmaking and animation (writing/directing), photography, and I returned to music too (composing scores for films/games). During that period, I had co-written a book on digital painting techniques, and also wrote articles for the game/CG industry. Those were my second taste of being published.

Around 2009 or so, my novel writing picked up pace, and I slowly realized that it was the one thing left I needed to focus on. I had spent many years excelling in other creative endeavors and made a living at them, but storytelling was always the heart and soul of my creativity, and I needed to focus on it, for I wasn't getting any younger.

I was tired of dealing with budget/funding problems of productions in film/animation and games, as well as dealing with personnel issues and office politics. I also got sick of all the technical complications of modern music production--dealing with troubleshooting computers, complex DAW software and plug-ins, and also the continual devaluation of music in our civilization. Music has become nothing more than audio wallpaper in our society, freely shared on youtube.

Writing was the last thing I could do on my own, without a production team and office politics and begging for funding, and without the perpetual headache of dealing with so much tech. It also has no stigma attached to it like comic books do--no matter what the "mature graphic novel" guys do, to the rest of the world, they'll always be "comic books."

So since 2009, I've been building up a pretty good momentum in my novel writing, and the more I focus on it, the more it feels like my true calling. I still love art, music, film, games, etc, but the only creative medium that is the most straightforward translation from my heart and soul is writing.

I'm enjoying myself so much while writing, and I don't really miss the other creative endeavors. I just want to keep on writing and see where it takes me. (I still keep my hand in art, music, photography, but I don't spend nearly as much time on them as I used to. I try to devote as much time to my writing instead.)

I would like my third taste of being published to be my novels.

Started writing seriously as a soldier in Vietnam, 1969. Got accepted into the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 1971, upon leaving the Army. Did an M.F.A. there with John Irving as thesis advisor. Thesis novel was terrible, but good enough for degree.

Took up another academic discipline at the same time, which evolved into a Ph.D. and career in a hard science, and put away creative writing for some years. Much academic writing during that time. Took it back up in the late 1990s, produced a pile of fiction shorts and some personal essays.

Started querying and/or submitting things around 1996. Turned out to be a dreadful idea. Attended several high-level writers conferences, won some money in a contest at one of those, but had absolutely no success at getting anything accepted via the standard submission process. Had two shorts requested by editors of on-line venues who noticed them in critique forums (one here at AW). Both those venues now defunct.

About four years ago, got so frustrated at the "process" that I stopped submitting. Recently have begun to do so again. Three shoit stories currently out, with no expectations.

In other words, the journey has been one of voyaging deeper and deeper into the darkest swamp, with no evidence of a way out.

caw

My story is essentially lots of feeling like the worst writer of all time, interspersed with short bursts of madness.

I wrote for years without having an end goal in mind, or really understanding all the different markets that exist for writers. Then I wrote creative non-fiction that people wanted to publish, so I kept doing that. After a while, I remembered why I love fiction, and just began to read as much as I physically had time to read, before starting to write fiction again.

Hopefully there will be an update in the not too distant future that reveals my incredible literary success

Loving everyone's history!

Mine starts silly. In second grade (1986), we wrote "alligator poems" as a writing exercise. The teacher liked mine so much she actually embarrassed me by reading it out loud (the only one she did so for) and gushing about it in front of the class. So I thought, hey, this writing thing's kinda cool and fun! Started writing little short stories, most of them sucked, but I won a regional contest in fourth grade, got a piece published in a regional school-age 'zine in fifth grade and won a statewide award in sixth. Kept trying my hand at longer fiction, but in elementary school, longer was... relative.

In high school and college I finally started completing full-length crappy novel manuscripts and sold a few more poems and short stories for actual pay, however miniscule. Wrote a novel as my honors project in college and got some good feedback from my profs. Planned to get a job and then work on revising it.

Then I got diagnosed with CFS and most stopped writing except for massively awful nanos from 2003-2011. :-/ Kept trying to start again but failing. But this year's attempt at restarting seems to have taken, and while I'm still writing crap, at least I'm writing crap regularly so I'm counting it a win

I grew up surrounded by books. I loved reading stories, I loved telling stories, and as soon as I could write, I loved to write them. Unfortunately my attention span would only get me as far as the exciting climax, and I was off to start the next newer and shinier story.

In High School my creative writing teacher pestered me to submit things. She ended up sending off one of my poems to a state competition and I got published in that.

It was cool, but I failed to see how twenty minutes of tinkering with words in class was all that note worthy. I figured it was just what teachers do; fill your head with false praise so you feel better than you actually are. (Yes, I am that cynical)

I was always writing something, but rarely finished. Didn't matter, since I had no thought of publishing.

A few years ago my husband saw an ad for Writers of the Future. He bugged me to finish a story I was working on and submit it.

Eventually I did, and got an Honorable Mention.

Started submitting short stories to little paying niche markets. Sold about every fourth story I submitted.
One story got printed, and reprinted in a "best of" anthology.
Unfortunately 3/4 of the markets closed before my stories saw print.
At least I got paid for the first one.

The market I wanted to get into more than any other, closed.

Got frustrated and stopped submitting for two years. Worked on my writing. If I was going to get published, I wanted to get into the pros.

Recently started dipping my toes in the submission waters again.

We'll see if I can kick in any doors this time. Or if I'm going to bounce off and land on my ass.

Some very heart-warming as well as heart-wrenching stories in this thread. I swear, y'all are gonna make this big, ugly ex-cop break down in tears. So many of you are trying so hard and coming so close. Others are determined to beat it and prevail, although they've not splashed ink yet with a publisher or attracted an agent. Others are praying and hoping. Others are wondering "Why not me this time?"

Believe me, it never stops. I'm still there. But just remember this:

A Writer is…
A humble, receptive student and negotiator
But the heart that beats within his breast
Is a determined savage
Unfamiliar with surrender -- C.H. Stevenson

I'm still on submission, but I think my story is pretty bonkers. This is what I posted on my website:

There are a lot of crazy stories out there about how extremely successful writers at first couldn't get an agent. I've read a few articles that discuss how insane it is that fourteen agencies rejected Twlight before Writers House picked it up (and then spent the next five years dancing a happy dance over the kajillion dollars they made themselves). And Katie Couric during her University of Virginia commencement speech mentioned how The Help was rejected over sixty times.

Only a writer, one who has run the gauntlet of querying (ie pitching her book to agents) knows that fourteen rejections, or even sixty, is NOTHING. NOTHING! If I didn't know that, I would have given up on this whole writing bit a long time ago. I didn't, and I finally, finally have my agent.

I wrote Promise Me You'll Come Back, my middle grade manuscript that secured my representation as a writer, in 2010. Just like Stephanie Meyers (we're both geniuses, you see), the idea came to me in a dream. The book was initially 35,000 words and in third person. I threw it out into the world and got a pretty high request rate. All rejections, though, and one agent even suggested that the book should be rewritten in first person. Since I agreed with that suggestion, I rewrote the novel. Unfortunately, I queried the rewritten version far too early and eventually tabled the project after a straight eight months of nothing but rejections.

Since a writer writes, always (a quote from the best writer movie of all time, Throw Momma From the Train), I kept writing. I wrote a young adult novel, The Master List, and I seriously thought that would be THE ONE. I thought to myself, okay, if I am willing to do the work, The Master List will get picked up and that agent will be forced to also represent Promise Me. Hurrah!

Only The Master List didn't get picked up. It got a lot of interest - about thirty requests and two phone calls, but no offer. About a half dozen agents loved the voice and the premise, but they all asked for major revisions. Because the advice was consistent (and a writer also listens), I decided to pull The Master List to complete the revisions.

That was a bummer, because I thought I was really, really close. Because it was a bummer, I decided to do something to make myself feel better. I spent about a week revisiting and revising Promise Me. (Yeah, we writers have sick and twisted notions of how to get out of a funk). When I did, I realized how much more I personally preferred that novel. Thinking that I might as well try, I sent out about ten queries between August 8th and August 14th.

On August 9th, Charlie Olsen of InWell Management, the same agency that represents such books as The Descendants, Confessions of a Shopaholic, and The Book Thief, asked for the full manuscript. On August 20th, I received an email that began with "what a wonderful, sweet novel you have written." Thinking this was a precursor to the rejection in order to make me feel better, I skimmed the rest of the email and experienced a literal jaw drop when I saw the line where Charlie said he wanted to talk about the opportunities he could offer as an agent. We had the call that afternoon, and he offered representation.

Charlie gave me four days to make a decision. In that short space of time, I received another offer from a truly fantastic agent. However, I simply could not see another agent loving the book as much as Charlie does. Published writers always say that you want someone who is a true cheerleader for your work, and with Charlie I got the entire team of the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders. I'm so excited to be working with him and to see where this takes me. Next week I have the pleasure of meeting him in person at InkWell's office in New York City.

More than anything, I hope this story encourages other writers. If you want it badly enough, do not give up. Take the criticism, suck up the rejections, and keep on chasing that rainbow. If you do, one day you'll get to stop running.

I didn't start writing seriously until three years ago. I won the fiction essay prize at school, but despite this early promise didn't write anything else for thirty years

I was messing around on the internet a few years ago, blogging and making mischief, and was noticed by a national online news organisation and offered a weekly column. I declined, since it would have conflicted with my day job, but it got me thinking that I should find another outlet, so I made a start on a novel.

I wrote it in 18 months, completed it January last year. I was introduced to an agent by a friend, and he took on the novel the day after reading it. He sent it to six major publishers, and one of them signed me up on a two-book deal in July last year.

It's currently in typesetting and will be released July 2013, so that will be 18 months after I finished writing.

I am currently writing my second novel, still working a 50 hour week in my professional day job, and wrangling three kids. The manuscript for the second book is due Christmas 2013.

I've just completed a first draft of a screenplay based on my first novel, and my agent has started shopping that around to movie producers.

I've loved books since I was old enough to hold one on my own. I obviously don't remember it, myself, but my parents say that's how it happened. I dug into literature as fast as I could get my hands on it. H.G. Wells and Alexandre Dumas have been favorites of mine as far back as I can remember.

Like many kids, I played pretend in the backyard with my younger brother and my friends. But not simply playing house, or cowboys and indians, etc. I spearheaded detailed adventures. We had plastic shields, wooden swords and makeshift magic staves out of sticks and whatever we could duct tape to them. Also, NERF guns. We had a shoebox full of 'treasure', and an overreaching story that I recorded every evening when we all had to go inside, to pick up where we left off the next afternoon. Most of the neighborhood kids grew out of our games, one by one. But I, my brother, and our best friend kept going into junior high school. Then, our friend couldn't come over every day because his mom was selling her house in our neighborhood, and his dad's place, as well as his new school, was pretty far away.

After that, I took up a 3-ring binder filled with notebook paper, and decided I'd write the stories that we would have otherwise played out. Wells and Dumas I was not, but I didn't care. It was fun. I dabbled in online fanfiction, and got something of a following there. I wasn't great, but considering everyone there was amateur, the curve wasn't very high. And my love for reading gave me strong models to work from.

And then, I ventured into online RP territory, on the side of writing in my notebook. A few creepers later, I settled into a fan forum that had an entire board dedicated to acting out your own character in the threads. I went through some pretty god-awful characters, and even worse narration, but the community had lots of give and take. When everyone played nice, our creativity grew exponentially. However, as with most good things, the pool started getting tainted by those who wouldn't play nice, because they had to be god-powerful and the best of everything, and 'nu-uh, you didn't stop my supermove because it's unblockable, because D&D says so' or some malarkey like that. It wasn't even a D&D board. We never worked by D&D rules. Outcomes were usually decided by someone being a gracious player and taking the gorram hit, or by private message between the two involved to discuss.

Infighting ensued, and most of the good players left, because it wasn't worth sticking around and dealing with the 'spoiled brat children' who were moving in. Meanwhile, this very good online buddy of mine had started a single-thread RP story on Myspace, (Way to mark how long ago this was, eh?) mostly original ideas, but borrowing heavily from a grab bag of anime and video games. He and some friends of his had already done one or two, and this was a new chapter. I joined in, recycling a character I had used on the previous RP forum, and he and I took the story into overdrive. Some of his friends were convinced he had made himself a second account to play from, because we shared our ideas, borrowed each other's characters, and played off of each other beautifully. Many of the other participants enjoyed reading our work more than joining in.

By then, we realized we were on to something. We tried another chapter on Myspace after that one concluded, but then one of the other RP'ers decided she was going to turn the entire story into a hack copy of her favorite anime. People left, and that story was never finished. But my friend and I, we made up a little free forum of our own, just so we could quickly swap ideas and writing between ourselves. It was there we started writing what would later become the MS's we currently hope to see published. Back then, however, we had virtually no idea what we were doing, we just had fun doing it. We still borrowed from video games and such, here and there, but the more we wrote, the less we borrowed, until at last it turned into something entirely our own. Friends of ours started visiting our writing board just to read the newest creative 'tennis game' between us. I would post a few hundred words, then pass to him, and he'd pick up right where I left off, and vice versa.

Some friends asked to get involved, like in the Myspace days, and we let them give it a shot. They just didn't mesh with what we were doing, and they faded back out again while we carried on. We soldiered on for probably four years in this fashion.

By this point, we had already been talking online, by phone, and we'd met in person. My best friend and writing partner roomed with people I knew, and got a job as an electrician close to where I was attending college, and we dated. It was a great time, until his roommates lost their jobs to the crappy market, and he couldn't hold up the rent alone. He went back to his parents' place, hundreds of miles away, but we kept up the long-distance writing, but this time with a long-distance relationship. It was tough, but we'd been best friends that way for so long, so it wasn't all that unfamiliar.

After a while of this, he got tired of watching his parents' dog and not having a way to make anything of himself. He brought up enlistment. He wasn't crazy about it, but he would get pay, and training. The trick was, he didn't want to do it if I wasn't going to be there with him, because without me there wasn't a point to it.

We got engaged after he graduated boot camp, and married over his holiday leave. (This friend is now my dear Hubby) You're probably wondering what this has to do with writing by this point. Well, by now, we had several completed manuscripts between us, and his job, demanding that it is, didn't allow him a lot of time to write like he used to. We agreed that, since his paycheck covered our expenses, and I wasn't pursuing work, I would take it upon myself to polish up our stories in the hopes of getting one or more of them published. That would be my 'job'. And I really did mean to do it.

...But I got intimidated. Which one was our best work? Our best chance at getting noticed as new writers? And if I could decide which was our best, then how would I go about making it the best it could be? Line-by-line editing? Total rewrite? I spent a lot of time staring at open Word documents and working myself into guilty anxiety, because I didn't know where to start.

I found Absolute Write, and got some pointers, even tried my hand in SYW after I qualified to post there. But it wasn't helping. I'd stare at the story I could tell backward and forward out of my own head, and not know what to do to the damn words in front of me. And then the Navy moved us north. In winter. I'm a tropical creature by blood and upbringing, so that was an adjustment for me. It was even worse because the cold, dark, wet weather outside got me way down. I didn't even bother getting out of bed some days, much less opening a document to stare futilely at it.

Then I mustered up the determination to scribble and post a query draft in QLH. The feedback helped, and I was contacted by another AWer who offered to beta for me. Now, we beta for each other, and having that sort of accountability (plus daily vitamin D supplements) is helping me take one story piece by piece and rewrite it.

I'm still quite a way from submission, still, but I believe in the story Hubby and I wrote, and what's more, my beta friend believes it has merit, as well, something that warms my heart to this day and gives me hope. So that's where we are today.

...Wow, that ended up pretty long. Uhm... Sorry?

Wow, this is a great thread. Very interesting to read everyone's journey in the writing world.

Mine started in second grade. We were told to write a poem for Mother's Day. In the whole state, I was the only one from my school that got picked to be published in the newspaper. That was the start of everyone telling me never to put down my pen and paper.

My brother bought me a word processor which I carried with me (figuratively speaking... that thing was huge) until around 14 or 15 when I got my first computer (a refurbished IBM Thinkpad). By then I was spending all my free time writing either erotica or ghost stories. I had a novelette written by then which I stashed away and notebooks stacked up on my desk filled with ideas and plots.

I won third place in an essay contest for Black History Month when I was a sophomore (or maybe a junior? I can't remember now...) and while there, the guest speaker told my parents never to let me stop writing and said that despite me only taking third, he liked my paper the most. That boosted my confidence quite a bit and I promised him I'd keep at it.

I took Creative Writing my senior year and didn't do too bad, but I was too embarrassed to show my work so I came away with a B.

When I graduated high school, I published that shitty little novelette and received my author's copies by the time I reached college. I met the man I would marry in 2006 and it was at that time that I came up with the idea for the novel I'm currently working on.

I dropped out of college in 2007 and married in 2008. The bills grew and the writing came to a halt as we worked as many hours as possible, the Hub at two jobs and me as a reporter. I still jotted notes once in a while, but we succumbed to each other's peer pressure and spent most our days drunk and stoned eating White Castle and playing Monkeyball on the Gamecube.

I eventually left my job at the newspaper after a fallout with my boss when the paper went downhill and he couldn't pay me anymore. I was so upset at not being paid for my writing that I gave up altogether. We moved to a new apartment when we couldn't sleep at night because of the gunshots (it wasn't a great neighborhood...) and I got a job working as a paralegal.

At this point, I still wasn't writing like I wanted to be, and in 2010 I suffered a breakdown and had to stop working. I figured it would be the perfect time to get my book off the ground, but while still recovering, I couldn't bring myself to write a single word.

I turned 25 last September and it was then that I realized what a loser I've been all these years (as far as writing goes.) I had big dreams to be published and successful by the time I reached 25, and yet there I was, on disability and with nothing to show for it.

So I revised my plot, worked out as many kinks as possible, and here I am today with a nearly finished MS. I work from home now, so it gives me plenty of time to write (although I admit, I do slack off a bit here and there.) I'm working on getting a strict schedule for myself when it comes to writing. I plan to have this MS completed by the summer and edited and out on sub by the fall.

So, no, I'm not published yet, and my journey certainly is not over. In a way, I feel like it's barely started. And I'm confident enough to say that publishing one book, or even two or three, will not end my journey. I plan to write until the day I die.

Phew, that actually felt pretty good. I have a sort of renewed sense of hope now. Thanks, OP! And thanks to everyone else for sharing your stories. I skimmed through a few, but I'm going to go back and read them more carefully now. I look forward to seeing what others have to say.

History

I just started writing last year after wondering for years how tough it would be to put together a novel and get published. It was tougher than I thought. It took almost four months to write the first draft and another month to go over it and re-write. Then I got rejected by numerous agents and decided to go to the small Publishers.

I was fortunate to find one that accepted my MS and they have taught me a tremendous amount about usage, tenses and POV. I'm trying to incorporate all of this in a 2nd book I started in December.

There have been some amazing and inspiring stories here. Thanks to everyone for sharing!

Age 3: Started reading on my own and promptly (and figuratively) devoured every book handed to me.

7: Wrote my first short story. It was about a deer. Named Hanukah. It was probably as horrible as it sounds.

12: Wrote a novel that was a blatant rip-off of whatever fantasy series I was reading at the time. Had the cajones to share it with my junior high classmates.

High school: Continued to write fantasy novels that were never meant to see the light of day.

College: Made the brief switch to historical fiction and started (but never completed) a picaresque novel set in ancient Spain. Wrote some short stories that won awards from my college English department. It was the first time a "legitimate" person liked my work enough to recognize it.

2008-present: Got serious about writing. Began the first draft of a literary mystery in October 2009, finished the first draft in August 2010, and have been revising ever since (so close!). Enrolled in an MFA program in 2011 and had three literary short stories picked up in 2012. In addition to my literary mystery revisions, I'm also working on a dystopian mystery novel set in the future Sudan and a series of linked science fiction short stories.

Since my group of friends is mostly composed of science- and math-minded people, I'm known as "the writer"...so I guess I can't give up now!

Also, I'd like to send across-the-Internet hugs to all of you who've written through or have used writing to cope with some form of illness, whether it be mental or physical. I've been there, too. We writers are a resilient bunch!

Welllll...

I finished my Obligatory Fantasy Novel at twenty or so, sent it out, got one handwritten rejection, and was too dumb to know how promising that was. Shoved it in a drawer and focused on my art. Eventually started doing a webcomic.

A few years later, my webcomic was doing well and a friend who is a romance author told a funny story about her weirdo artist friend at a romance writer's dinner. An agent was sitting next to her and they struck up a conversation about graphic novels, which the agent was seeking, and which I happened to do and which the New York Times had said some nice things about the week before. (I assume that particular name made the agent's ears prick up.)

My friend came home, called me up, and said "Do you want a literary agent?"

I said "Sure, why not?" (I had no idea what they were for, why I wanted one, or that they might be rare, but if she said I wanted one, I was willing to go along with it.)

This is apparently not what you say when someone tries to get you an agent. She has never, ever let me forget this.

The agent checked out my art, which had a great many weird little stories attached to the paintings, and sent me an email asking if I had representation. I wasn't even sure what that meant. (I don't live in Washington DC...?) I said I'd never even spoken to an agent. Five minutes later, the phone rang and my agent said "You are now speaking to an agent."

"Cool!" I said.

She asked if I could write a children's book based on a particular painting. I said "Uh...sure!" Then I panicked--how long should I take? If this nice woman wanted me to write a book, I shouldn't keep her waiting too long! I was used to art deadlines! Children's books are short, right? I steeled myself and said "Can you give me six weeks?"

There was an indescribable noise on the other end of the line and then she said (very graciously) "Take eight."

Well...used to art deadlines, like I said. I wrote it in four and sent it in so I'd have plenty of time for revisions. (It's how I always worked with art directors! I assumed the two were similar!) She sold it a few months later.

To make a long, occasionally painfully naive story short, she's still my agent, she's working on selling my seventeenth children's book, and my friend the romance writer has STILL never let me forget it.

ebbrown said:

Wish we had a "like" button. Looking forward to seeing "to be continued.."

Click to expand...

Thank you!

JoNightshade said:

After 350 rejections...

Click to expand...

Holy crap!


I mean "holy crap"! I mean "ho-ly crap!"


I cannot get over this. How? I would've given up after only 50 rejections to be honest. After 50 rejections I would've said, "this story needs some major work, more like a complete rewrite!! You are the queen of persistence and patience. How do you do it?


OK, to answer the OP's question.


Ages 21-27 - Wrote behemoths knowing nothing about word count, and guiding myself by the fact that Stephen King's It was about 1,100 pages long. I thought I could do it, too. Then I started reading agents' blogs and I heard a big buzzing sound, as in when you're watching a trivia show so to speak and they play that sound when they get the question wrong.


Ages 27-30 - Learned to write a maximum of 120,000 words per first draft. I write sci-fi.

Ages 31 - now - battling depression and writing, and doing research on what readers don't like and what they do like. Writing again. Have not submitted anything to an agent as of yet. I have a story with a beta right now.

1985 - 87 (age 4-6) - Read lots and lots of stories (Roald Dahl, 101 Dalmations etc.) Wrote lots of crappy stories. Drew lots of pretty pictures. Had very proud parents.

1989 - wrote my first 'novel' - in reality a short story that stretched to about 10 handwritten pages of A4 lined paper (both sides!) with a front cover sheet I illustrated myself. I was obsessed with horses, read oodles of the Saddle Club, Black Beauty, etc. Story was a blatant rip off of the last book I read, The Black Stallion Revolts. My dad said it 'started out really well, then went a bit off the rails'. Never showed him anything I'd written ever again

1990 - 1999 - Wrote tonnes of stories, drew loads of pretty pictures, started loads of novels that never got finished. Told everyone I was going to be an author. Won the literary prize at school for getting 100% in both English A levels. Was generally a disgusting swot. Decided to take English Lit at Uni, then discovered classical civilisation and decided to study both in a joint honours degree.

1999- 2002 - did ungraduate degree. Was generally a disgusting swot. Won more academic prizes, somehow, considering I also spent a lot of time getting drunk and being promiscuous. Lived with an archaeology/egyptology student. Became mildly obsessed with the Mummy films - and Oded Fehr Started writing a novel set between the two Mummy films and was naive enough to think it could get published.

2002 - 2004 - postgraduate degree in classics (ancient Greek). Discovered fanfiction and realised that no, what I was doing was not unique, and no, I was not going to get my fanfiction novel published. Wrote a lot of fanfiction, met BFF at ff.net.

2005 - 2009 - wrote my magnum opus of a Mummy fanfic, which ran to 300k words. Got 500+ reviews, many of which said I should publish (due to the fact that it barely used the Mummy characters and was mainly original). Decided to divide it into a trilogy and rewrite book 1 and sub to an agent.

2010 - Subbed book 1 to an agent. Got a R&R but decided to embark on major rewrite to change genre from historical romance to historical fiction. Joined ancient Greek reenactment group.

2011 - wrote a prologue. Met a UK based HF agent via reenactment event in Greece. Invited to sub a synopsis of my (barely started) rewrite. Wrote one on the ferry back from Greece, subbed it. Invited to sub first 3 chapters. Hastily wrote them and sent them off. Offered rep next day.

2011 - 2013 - still rewriting the MS. My agent is very patient....

Age 4-ish: Announce that I shall grow up to be a ballerinaprincessbrainsurgeon. Then I wet my bed and mom says, "Oh honey, brain surgeons don't wet their beds!" So there goes THAT dream.

Age 10: Decide that ballerinaprincessbrainsurgeons are lame anyway. Writers like Dahl and manga artists like Fujiko Fujio are way cooler. Except I can't draw, so manga artists are lame too. Decide to be a writer.

Age Uhh, so not telling: Am an unpublished writer. Still way better than ballerinaprincessbrainsurgeon.

JoNightshade said:

Always been a writer.

16 - Completed my first novel. It sucked, didn't know it then, kept writing. Decided to major in English.

21 - Wrote first draft of Courting Greta. It sucked. Nobody wanted it. Kept writing, finally landed an agent with another novel. Agent sucked. Ditched agent. Kept writing. Graduated from college, taught English in China, got a job writing travel related stuff. Had kids.

29 - Finished umpteenth rewrite of Courting Greta, the one book I just kept circling back to. After 350 rejections (this time around, not counting all the others), I snagged an awesome amazing agent.

30 - Awesome amazing agent sold manuscript.

31 - Courting Greta will be out in June. Still writing.

All told, half my life spent attempting to sell a novel. A decade for this novel in particular.

Click to expand...

I will buy your book purely because I support the belief of never giving up and anyone so dedicated to pursuing something they love and succeeding, no matter how long it had taken, is a mentor in my eyes.

I'll keep my word on that and I am sure I will enjoy it.

My Journey so far:

Age 14: My first piece of writing was a short story based on a book we had just read in English during high school. We were told to write half a page to a page describing the events we thought would take place after the book - I wrote 9 pages and was given more than full marks with my teacher at the time telling me I should become a writer, even helping me in private to help expand my technique.

Age 16 - I started writing my first book after writing several short stories and getting my old English teacher to criticize my work. The story amounted to about 30,000 words before I gave up however a couple of my characters I had invented, I had fallen in love with.

Age 20-23:

During the period from 14 till 20, I had also pursued my love for music (Trance / House to be more specific) producing music and after my small amount of fame for a year during 19 to 20, I decided that I would take a break from music after being signed to a record label and that label eventually asking me to produce something I didnt want to do.

I turned back to the characters I had created when I was younger and attempted to write a new story, 50,000 words in after three attempts of that story, evolving every time, I ended up dropping the book all together, wanting to start again from scratch.

23:

Again with another unfinished book, I had decided after a bad relationship to travel Europe, buying a ticket the next day and leaving a couple months later to embark on my traveling experience.

24 - The same year (Last) till present.

During my time traveling I ended up meeting someone who I am now currently engaged in and have been living in Europe on a WAY over extended holiday (Croatia to be exact) and she had motivated me to continue my passion of writing my book along side music. In saying that, I have now finished my first draft of my book with a story that had evolved over the years to finally give me a world and a plot that actually makes me excited to write and expand this story as much as I can (A total of three books in this trilogy with 2 books based on past events that made this story possible and a spin off of one of the main characters who's actions made this story come to life.)

It took me three months to finish the first draft, given that I have all the time in the world to work on it and in saying so, I hope that before I head home to Australia that I will have two books of the three completed with the third on its way.

6-7 - I hated books because I sucked at reading. One day, my teacher forced me to stay in class with a book during recess while the others played. I don't know why but as I was looking at the pages, words just seemed to form and I understood them.

11 - I read all the books at school and my mom took me to my first public library.

13 - I waited for my mom to get comfortable with her jet magazines and snuck over to the adult side of the library. This was the first time I censored myself after finding out that Kiss The Girls book is nothing like the movie. I didn't mind the sexy times romance books and always made sure my mom was looking the other way when the librarian scanned them. I did get caught after two weeks because a vampire book had blood all over the cover.

15 - Discovered David Eddings at my high school library and I fell in love with fantasy books. For an english project we had to write a short story and I turned in 8 pages about an amnesiac princess and dragons. It was unfinished but I still got a high grade because everyone was captivated when I read it out loud. I loved that attention and wondered what it would be like to do it for a living.

17 - I wondered out loud if I could write for a living. The only person who didn't chastise me for thinking about such an unrealistic career was my english teacher and that wasn't enough for a teen with zero self-esteem at the time.

18 - Washed out of basic training due to a sudden illness.

19 - Got healthy again and started looking up colleges. I was dumb enough to ask an advisor during a tour about writing and he laughed in my face. Told me to stick to computers and write when I retire. Two months into my computer classes, I got rear-ended. Nothing was broken but I had strange nerve pain in my arms. The pain got worse until it spread throughout my body and one day I couldn't get out of bed. I had to go back to the doctor for a ton of tests and try to heal some of the pain through physical therapy.

21 - Diagnosed with fibro which led to my thyroid going on the fritz. It started growing hard cysts and I had to have multiple biopsies. I spent so much time at doctor's offices that I started writing notes about my princess again while I waited. Unfortunately, she didn't seem right anymore so I revamped the entire story.

I got my results back and it wasn't cancer but the doctor was worried because the cyst kept coming back and this time it was bigger. It was threatening my voice box and I needed to have half my thyroid removed. Oh and I only had a month to do it in because my insurance expired at age 22.

22 - I kept writing because I needed to get my mind off my health and the anger that I had because I was stuck in this situation due to an irresponsible driver. It worked for a while until I hit a block on ever single one of my stories. I couldn't finish anything and it made me feel like a failure for screwing up at the one thing I should be good at.

24 - 2010 was a shitty year in general and people on my mom's side of the family started dropping like flies. On Christmas day, my mom was on a plane headed to my uncle's funeral, my dad was stuck in Boston after a snow storm, and I was home alone because we were too poor to afford another ticket. The freaky thing was that Georgia got hit with almost half a foot of snow. I cried while staring out the window at a scene that I had wished for since the blizzard of '93. I wanted one good thing out of the day so I started writing again. I didn't care about how much I had failed or how much pain writing would put me in, I just wrote whatever the hell I wanted.

25 - I kept working on it and felt more productive than I had in years. I was halfway done with the rough draft and read through it. I liked my new story but had no idea what to do with it. I googled around, found AW and decided to finish it for publication. While my self-confidence was getting a boost, my strength was getting worse. Fibro can't really kill you so I didn't think that being vigilant was important. I didn't have health insurance anyway so what could I do about it.

26 - I was a few chapters from the end and didn't care that I kept getting dizzy and weird chest flutters. I attempted to take iron pills since I suspected that anemia was the problem after being warned to keep an eye on that too back in '06 but I kept vomiting them back up. I ended up in the ER after a night of chest pains and had to get an emergency blood transfusion. After I got out of the hospital, I felt weak as a babe and pissed at myself for being so stupid. This was also the time I stumbled on Chuck Wendig's blog and he had great advice about how writers needed to take care of their bodies. I believed it and thought that if I wanted to become a full-time writer, I would have to take care of myself and not just my writing.

27 - I spent all of 2012 discovering how to edit, when to rest, and what to eat. My habits aren't perfect but I haven't thrown up in a year and I'm still proud of my productivity. I'm working on a query letter and I'm trying to be less of a lurker on this site.