Two years ago, my first novel WAITRESS OF THE MONTH hadn’t sold, and even though, on my most lucid days, I knew my then-agent was running out of prospects and we were reaching the end, I didn’t want to admit that the story I’d started writing in my head in college and hauled from Massachusetts to Ohio to New York City to New Hampshire to New York State to Vermont…
Do I really need to write about what it’s like to get rejected? I don’t think so. If you’ve ever heard (or said), “It’s not you, it’s me,” then you already have some idea of what the world of agent and publication rejection is like. So here’s my advice for dealing with rejection: You come up with a plan. I’m going to tell you (again) what I did to get…
For me, it began in the third grade. I wrote my first story, called The Haunted Meatball. My teacher, Mrs. Brennan, told me it was wonderful. So wonderful, in fact, that she was going to send it off to have it published in a children’s magazine. So off went my first story, into the world. And we waited. We waited for weeks. Then months. Then one day, she took me…
I hate the phone. It runs in my family. I am genetically predisposed to distrust all forms of instant communication. And yet for a writer on submission, the phone takes on a level of importance only slightly above oxygen. Every time I was at my lowest point on my road to publication, by some bizarre cosmic coincidence, that phone rang. Posting each instance of this would take an entire page,…
I found my agent like I’ve found a lot of things in my life; through a bizarre series of odd coincidences and happy accidents. First off, let me state for the record that I had no connections in the publishing industry. I have no MFA. In fact, I don’t have any higher degree at all. I had no relatives, friends, friends of friends, kind of/sort of connections, period. I was…
With the publication of my first book looming, more and more I get questions from other writers who are starting to navigate the publishing waterways. They have a mistaken notion that I have some secrets or know what I’m doing. One of the most common questions I hear is: “Where did you get your agent?” Why WalMart of course – the aisle near office supplies. No – don’t be foolish,…
I’m someone who’s been around the block with agents. Before I came to my senses, see, I dabbled (mostly unsucccessfully) as a screenwriter and so I’d been through every version of despicable agenting. After being lied to, misled, hit on and even worse — ignored — I’d come to believe that an agent, if you wanted to do anything that required one, was a necessary evil, a person who always…
All right, all right. I’m going to ‘fess up here. As a writer and author on the brink of publication, I am constantly lamenting to anyone who will listen about how I don’t have enough time to write. If only I had more time to write, my second novel would be done! If only I had more time to write, my agent would see that I’m not a slacker, but…
