How many trunk novels have you written?

I started writing late, after many jobs and hobbies, and went at it for real, after many years of experience in life. I wrote a flash piece, then a short story, then a novelette, then a novella, then a novel (all in like half a year), and they all got published, and I kept going for another year, producing a bibliography of epic proportions, and last year and this year the rights to most of my stuff from that initial writing burst* revert to me.

So no trunk anything. Every book, great or small, I've written is either published, or is already unpublished. Most likely because I didn't write any books as a teen, nor even a new adult, but only as an adult adult.

______
*In the last half decade I've paused all pen-name brands and am working on raising my level and reinventing myself because...guess.

No trunk novels. I sold my first novel, which was surprising since I had no experience, and wrote it in three weeks. I also had to sell the first draft because he agent who saw it said she needed it before the first of the next month in order to meet an editor's publishing schedule

But I don't believe in trunk novels, even if they don't sell, and even if you think they're lousy. Put they in submission, and keep them there until they either sell, or until some agent or editor asks for specific changes, or gives solid feedback you can use in a rewrite. Heinlein's ules. They work.

Anyway, after thirty-seven years, my experience is that selling a novel isn't so much about writing ability as it is about knowing which story to tell, and knowing what should happen in that story. Not everyone can learn to write well, but the majority can certainly write well enough to sell a good story that has good characters. There's an old saying that I've found to be perfectly true. "Publishers want something just like everything else, only different".

Many new writers can write fairly well, or even very well, but they leave out the "different", or they leave out the "just like everything else". It usually takes both to sell a novel.

Jamesaritchie said:

Many new writers can write fairly well, or even very well, but they leave out the "different", or they leave out the "just like everything else". It usually takes both to sell a novel.

Click to expand...

I like that one.

I have written four novels, none published. The one I'm editing and preparing for shopping now is my third. The first one I wrote was a mess and no one would take it, but I've recently begun a complete re-imagining of the world and making it uniquely "me." My skills have improved a lot since I was 15, so now I know what steps to take. The second book I wrote is finished, but I'm waiting a while before coming back to that one. It's contemporary lit fiction and I've been on too much of a fantasy/sci-fi kick to stop now. The fourth book is a monster at 180k and will take a lot more work, but the first draft was completed in January.

I started seriously writing when I was 23 (though I'd been "pretend writing" since I was 15). I'd been floundering for four years and had reached a sort of internal crisis point. I either was or was not a writer. I ditched the computer in favor of a typewriter, started reading fiction seriously, and started taking active steps to make my work better. I knew it had improved once I started getting better feedback from betas, but it took me until September of last year until I was able to get a story accepted.

None. I wrote half of an amazingly bad story, chucked it away and wrote a better story, which was published.

My practise came in the form of blogging, mostly. I've been writing on the internet since 1996. Millions of words.

ETA: I decided I seriously wanted to be a writer when I was in my late 20s, though it had been The Dream since I was in kindergarten. Because I was writing publicly (on my blog), people told me whether or not it was any good. I began to consider it publishable when readers told me it was publishable. I do think that without this audience to egg me on, I'd still be floundering in the I'm Not Good Enough pool.

My first novel sold. I have one that's never been submitted, though, and another that I've only subbed (unsuccessfully) to one place. They're shelved for the moment, but I don't consider them trunked.

I was about forty when I started writing novels. I'd written short stories and poetry just about my whole life, though, but hadn't seriously pursued publication.

I sold my first novel. I plan on publishing everything I write, either through self or trade publishing. I'm into writing because I enjoy it, but it's far too much hard work not to put the story out into the world.

Holy moly, and here I thought getting your first book sold was the exception, not the rule. You folks are blowing my mind here, that's awesome.

Growing up, I was always told how it was borderline impossible to publish a book. It wasn't until I started hanging out on author forums that I began to realize how very possible it actually is.

andiwrite said:

Growing up, I was always told how it was borderline impossible to publish a book. It wasn't until I started hanging out on author forums that I began to realize how very possible it actually is.

Click to expand...

Growing up, I was always told how it was borderline impossible to publish a book. It wasn't until I started trying to get things published that I began to realize how truly impossible for me it actually is.

caw

I don't trunk anything. I may shelve it for a while, but I'll usually come back to it later, even if that means a complete rewrite.

They weren't full length novels, but I have a couple disastrously terrible stories that I wrote tens of thousands of words on and that I have no intention of ever coming back to.

L. OBrien said:

So I was curious about the rest of you. How many trunk novels did you write before you successfully published something? And how early did you start seriously writing? When did you start to consider your work publishable?

Click to expand...

I started to write when I neared retirement in the mid-90s. To date, I've written ten novels, #1 to #10. I cheated a little; I sent two novels (#6 and #7) to a new publisher who was stocking up, and they accepted both, followed by a third (#9) a year later. They've sold at a tolerable rate, between $15 and $50 a month for all three.

Two of my other novels, #2 and #10, I thought good enough to self-publish. They haven't sold well, either because they're crap, or they just get lost in the vast sea of other self published novels.

16, I think. And about 100 incomplete things.

So far, I've trunked one but I have a WIP I've been querying for a while and am getting pretty close to giving up on.

One, but that was because it wasn't written to be published. It was a "get this horrible idea away from me" and it was the only way to do it.

Only two are trunked rather than shelved. One because it was written by my 16 year old self and is just ... bad, I guess? It's a heavy cliché pile that 16 year old me would absolutely write.

The other was me getting some lingering yuck out of my system. It was never meant to see the light of day. Plus, it's tropey in a bad way.

Otherwise, anything else is likely to bubble up and be worth fixing.

Too many to count.

Three novels. I started writing as a high school dropout with zero experience and, aside from being a ravenous reader, little knowledge. With each novel my writing drastically improved. Though the most recent one is being considered by agents, I have a feeling I'll end up trunking it too.

L. OBrien said:

Can I second that? I feel the same, only I can never get up the nerve to actually query any agents because I always feel like my work isn't up to snuff.

I don't know if it's response bias or what, but I'm surprised by how many people could turn out a first novel and find a publisher for it (though I imagine that I would be doing a lot of people a disservice by saying it didn't require any work). I'm impressed, and a bit intimidated.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that in my case "turning out a novel" involved seven years of hard work (longer if you count the early stages of brainstorming the idea). Rather than write a bunch of practice novels and trunk them, I decided to come up with a story I loved SO deeply that I wouldn't mind perfecting it over a very long period of time. The hard work paid off, because when I was finally ready to submit, I got published with very little effort.

I'm not saying everyone else could devote seven years and automatically get published. But I do think the amount of time and effort one puts into the book plays a role its success. My book isn't a best seller or anything, but the reviews have been wonderful, and overall I'm happy with how I did things.

I also learned a lot about my process during those years, and now I can write a quality book in about six months.

I decided to seriously write less than a year ago. About the same time I joined AW, actually. But I had been non-seriously writing since I was about six or seven, with a few dry spells thrown in. Nothing I have written has been published yet, but not exactly trunked either. With the exception of two short stories that I wrote at the age of six and eleven respectively, I have not finished anything to be able to trunk it. I have finished the first draft of my current attempt at a novel and don't want to trunk it.

andiwrite said:

Keep in mind that in my case "turning out a novel" involved seven years of hard work (longer if you count the early stages of brainstorming the idea). Rather than write a bunch of practice novels and trunk them, I decided to come up with a story I loved SO deeply that I wouldn't mind perfecting it over a very long period of time. The hard work paid off, because when I was finally ready to submit, I got published with very little effort.

I'm not saying everyone else could devote seven years and automatically get published. But I do think the amount of time and effort one puts into the book plays a role its success. My book isn't a best seller or anything, but the reviews have been wonderful, and overall I'm happy with how I did things.

I also learned a lot about my process during those years, and now I can write a quality book in about six months.

Click to expand...

The fact that it took you seven years is actually quite encouraging, though I'm not sure you intended it as such. I've been working quite hard to make this first novel I'm writing something I'd be proud to publish, rather than letting it languish away under the bed and blackmail a debut novel for royalties or some such, and I keep feeling like it's taking too long to get it right-- but the concept of seven years is prompting me to adjust my expectations and keep plugging away.