How Did I Get Here?
Dec. 26th, 2006 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomi_jayI've always written. I used to write epic fantasy with dragons and wizards and of the such. I wrote this massive, epic, sprawling, million-character fantasy trilogy while I was in school that currently languishes in my wardrobe which I'm determined to resurrect one day because it is a good idea, dammit.
Then I went to university and wrote nothing but short stories for three years. I had a lot of bad writing habits knocked out of me and discovered that pizza is not a great euphemism for sex. (I didn't write that, by the way. It was someone else's story. It haunts me still.) Anyway, while I was busy slaving away for my degree, I wrote a few short stories about a character called Scarlett. A girl I lived with loved the stories (thanks, Skelly) so when I graduated I figured I'd write a novel about her. So I did. Huzzah! I joined a local writing group who helped me iron out the many problems in the first few chapters (thanks, CWIL). I never got round to getting the whole novel critiqued by my group because, you know, real life and stuff happens.
So, I have this novel, Ill-Met By Moonlight, and I'm thinking I like it enough to test the waters and offer it up to literary agents. I sent it to a couple and recieved nice, polite rejection letters in return. *devastation* But there's a twist! I have a writer friend in America, Lisa. We've known each other maybe five years now and I'd critiqued her novel when she was getting ready to find an agent of her own. Aaaand she got an agent. Further huzzahs! She told her agent that I'd helped out with the novel and said agent told her to tell me to email said agent. Keep up, kids.
I emailed her, thinking that she'd never want a client based in the UK, but she might be able to give me some tips on good agents to try over here anyway. The agent requested the whole damn manuscript after reading the first two chapters. More huzzahs. Now, here's my first ever tip to writers. Sending an almost-300 page manuscript to New York is expensive. And it's time-consuming, because the woman in the post office assumed I was on police business because of my work-badge and insisted on trying to sell me massive amounts of overseas insurance. So that's two tips, really. One, don't post manuscripts to New York very often. Two, don't work for the police.
Shortly afterwards I recieved an enthusiastic email from a lovely man called AJ proclaiming that he was "very sure" they'd take Ill-Met on. And then I didn't hear anything for about a month and I despaired and left the country for a week. (Those two events are unrelated, by the way). A few days after I came back, I had a phone call in the dead of night from AJ confirming that they wanted to take on the book and me! He was highly complimentary, so I felt it only polite to agree.
So right now I'm being represented by RMA Agency in New York and Ill-Met By Moonlight is with five publishers. Here's hoping somebody bites...
Then I went to university and wrote nothing but short stories for three years. I had a lot of bad writing habits knocked out of me and discovered that pizza is not a great euphemism for sex. (I didn't write that, by the way. It was someone else's story. It haunts me still.) Anyway, while I was busy slaving away for my degree, I wrote a few short stories about a character called Scarlett. A girl I lived with loved the stories (thanks, Skelly) so when I graduated I figured I'd write a novel about her. So I did. Huzzah! I joined a local writing group who helped me iron out the many problems in the first few chapters (thanks, CWIL). I never got round to getting the whole novel critiqued by my group because, you know, real life and stuff happens.
So, I have this novel, Ill-Met By Moonlight, and I'm thinking I like it enough to test the waters and offer it up to literary agents. I sent it to a couple and recieved nice, polite rejection letters in return. *devastation* But there's a twist! I have a writer friend in America, Lisa. We've known each other maybe five years now and I'd critiqued her novel when she was getting ready to find an agent of her own. Aaaand she got an agent. Further huzzahs! She told her agent that I'd helped out with the novel and said agent told her to tell me to email said agent. Keep up, kids.
I emailed her, thinking that she'd never want a client based in the UK, but she might be able to give me some tips on good agents to try over here anyway. The agent requested the whole damn manuscript after reading the first two chapters. More huzzahs. Now, here's my first ever tip to writers. Sending an almost-300 page manuscript to New York is expensive. And it's time-consuming, because the woman in the post office assumed I was on police business because of my work-badge and insisted on trying to sell me massive amounts of overseas insurance. So that's two tips, really. One, don't post manuscripts to New York very often. Two, don't work for the police.
Shortly afterwards I recieved an enthusiastic email from a lovely man called AJ proclaiming that he was "very sure" they'd take Ill-Met on. And then I didn't hear anything for about a month and I despaired and left the country for a week. (Those two events are unrelated, by the way). A few days after I came back, I had a phone call in the dead of night from AJ confirming that they wanted to take on the book and me! He was highly complimentary, so I felt it only polite to agree.
So right now I'm being represented by RMA Agency in New York and Ill-Met By Moonlight is with five publishers. Here's hoping somebody bites...