Alright, so all this reading on publishing has actually got me pretty excited. Ah! I just want to skip all my classes and write every single novel, short story, and poem I could possibly write and then I want to revise and revise and make sure my first pages are amazing and then send everything out until I get a million rejection letters and one acceptance and I just want to DO everything and—okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. Still, I'm pretty pumped.
Reading about what editors want, there were certain things that most of the mentioned. Like make sure you have a good opening (something I now try to work on with whatever I write) and try to say things in a new way. Don't be too focused on trends and try to be original. The story that’s itching to be written in the back of my head features zombies, which are extremely trendy. When the idea first popped into my head, I barely wanted to write about it because it seemed too derivative. But at this point in my planning, the story is set in a whole new fantasy world that also features witches and faerie and female leads (some of them queer! most of them of color!) and a whole bunch of stuff that I HOPE is enough to set it apart.
Another thing that came up in several of the readings were agents. Evidently, a great agent is incredibly helpful in terms of getting your work published and not getting totally ripped off and dying alone in a cardboard box in New York City. I think I'd like to have an agent myself one day, but that brings up even more questions. How do you find an agent? How do you know if they're any good? How much do they cost? I am a writer after all. Well, at least I know exactly what to Google.
Reading about what editors want, there were certain things that most of the mentioned. Like make sure you have a good opening (something I now try to work on with whatever I write) and try to say things in a new way. Don't be too focused on trends and try to be original. The story that’s itching to be written in the back of my head features zombies, which are extremely trendy. When the idea first popped into my head, I barely wanted to write about it because it seemed too derivative. But at this point in my planning, the story is set in a whole new fantasy world that also features witches and faerie and female leads (some of them queer! most of them of color!) and a whole bunch of stuff that I HOPE is enough to set it apart.
Another thing that came up in several of the readings were agents. Evidently, a great agent is incredibly helpful in terms of getting your work published and not getting totally ripped off and dying alone in a cardboard box in New York City. I think I'd like to have an agent myself one day, but that brings up even more questions. How do you find an agent? How do you know if they're any good? How much do they cost? I am a writer after all. Well, at least I know exactly what to Google.