It was such a pleasure to host you Stephanie! Thanks again for sharing your 3 Amazing Guest Posts :)
To Check Out Part 1 Click Here!
For Part 2 Click Here!
This is part three in a three-part series where author Stephanie
Carroll breaks down what you need to write a novel and finish. Check out part
one for how to start and part two for how to get through the editing phase.
This week is all about knowing when you are finished, which can be much more
difficult than writing The End.
As Winston Churchill said, “Writing a
book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it
becomes a mistress and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last
phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you
kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”
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Many writers say, I will know when my book is finished when an
agent or publisher picks me up. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The state
of the industry confuses authors about their finished work. We’ve all heard the
stories of the bestselling author who queried 100 agents before getting one who
would take a chance, so obviously it’s possible to be rejected even if you have
something that is finished and good. You would have to be extremely skilled at self-denial
to not question whether or not your book needs work after 100 rejections.
Still, I know plenty of writers who continue toiling on a wonderful book
because the industry hasn’t recognized their efforts yet.
So how do you know when your work is actually
ready?
The
Final Edits
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To begin, there shouldn’t be any sections that you personally
consider weak or flawed. Resist the urge to think an editor will ultimately
help you fix it. If you have those types of flaws, you probably won’t get
accepted by an editor and even if you do get an editor, most editors don’t edit
anymore. Check out this book for help with editing, Self-Editing for Publication.
Once you get to a point of satisfaction and a point where you can’t stand to
even look at your novel anymore, it’s time to get reader opinions.
Test
Readers
You can start sending it out to those agents who you don’t care
about rejecting you just to test the waters or you can get test readers. I did
a series of readings where I asked friends, family, and anyone from my Facebook
page to read my novel and answer a list of questions. It's free and easy to
convert your word document into an epub, which friends can view on their
e-readers. Here's the one I use Online Epub Converter.
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If you are like me and have trouble getting people to commit to
this beyond your mother and grandmother whose opinions’ are somewhat biased,
offer an Amazon gift card to the first person to get a feedback questionnaire
returned to you. That got some extra people interested in my test reading. If
the majority of readers report problems or seem unwilling to report either good
or bad, it usually means it needs more work. It wasn’t until the majority of
those readers reported that they couldn’t put the book down that I began to
believe the book was near completion.
Editors
for Hire
Writers can also pay for a content editor to go through their work
and help get it to a finished state, but be careful and extremely picky when
searching for these editors. There’s no certification and anyone can offer
their services even if their editing skills involve rewriting your book to
their liking. The process can also be drug out for years at an hourly rate,
which can rack up a bill into the thousands. I’m not saying content editing
isn’t the way to go. I’m saying be careful and well-informed when choosing an
editor.
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Don't have your book copyedited before sending it to agents and
publishers. Content editing is about the story. Copyediting is about grammar.
Proofreading is the very last edit right before publishing.
Traditional
Publishing
If you are going to try for traditional publishing, do make sure
your manuscript as clean as you can get it. Use Formatting and Submitting Your
Manuscript to make sure you have all the right
specifications.
Then start researching agents who represent your genre. I
recommend using 2013 Writer’s Market,
which is basically a phone book of agents, editors, and publishers for novels,
short stories, and magazines. Then comes the fun of learning how to write a
query letter to an agent, which is surprisingly difficult. This book
will help though: How to Write a Great Query Letter.
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Are
You Ready to be Finished?
The urban legend of writers is that there was this one author who
trolled around to bookstores with a red pen finding copies of her latest novel
and marking them up with changes and corrections . . . that author never
finishes!
Some authors honestly believe that there is no such thing as
finishing a novel because it can always get better or change in some form or
another. Not to mention perfection is an impossibility, but it is so easy to
become obsessed when your critique group can nitpick on every little thing, and
you've spent years telling yourself or having others tell you, it's not good
enough.
In this line of thinking, a novel is only ready when the
author is ready. Are you ready to risk the possibility that it’s not done,
that it will be judged harshly, or that it will be loved, and you will be required
to do publicity and pressured to continue producing work?
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Authors
Have to Be Confident
One of the hardest things for writers is to be confident in their
work, but confidence is essential for publishing because you have to be willing
to throw the book out to the public and publicize it by actually telling people
it’s good. To start being confident, stop telling people you are trying to be a
writer and just say you are a writer. Start telling people you have a novel and
talk about it as though you believe it’s fantastic. Don't be like me and hide
the fact that you are writing a book for years. Once you start telling people
they will be interested, impressed, and even helpful.
If you decide to take the newest route toward publishing, as in
ebooks and print on demand, don’t just rush on over to CreateSpace and pop out
an ebook the moment you think you’re done. No book is ready for the world until
it has been copyedited. If going for print, it needs to be typeset. If going
for ebook, it needs to be properly formatted.
So, are you ready to kill the monster?
Stephanie Carroll is an author and blogger. Her debut
novel, A White Room is coming out in the Summer of 2013. Learn more at www.stephaniecarroll.net. Also check out her blog The Unhinged Historian for fans of Gothic,
Magical, and Paranormal Victorian Fiction.
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