Paper Hearts: Some Writing Advice

Ten Important Things About Writing & Publishing

1. If you want to be published you have to learn how to write. One of the first things people ask me at conventions and signings and online is, "how do you get published?" This is the wrong question. It is not about how to get published. Far, far, FAR more important is, "how do you write." The problem? How to get published is an easy thing to answer. There are specific steps that nearly anyone who's published takes that leads to a book deal. But the number one step for every single person published is "write a book people want to read," and so the real question people should be asking is, "how do you write?" But, of course, there is no one answer to that, and that is a far, far more complicated question. But that's the question you should be asking first. 

2. It is unreasonable to expect the first thing you write to be published. No one ever expects a painter's first painting to be sold for a million in a museum. No one expects the first song some kid bangs out on the piano to put him in the symphony. Even if you go to school for something artistic, there's this idea of the "starving artist," where the artist is struggling to break in. Except when it comes to books. The first thing out of most people's mouths after you tell them you wrote a book is, "when will it be published?" Falcon punch these people in the throat and tell them to calm the heck down. Art requires practice. Sure, some people get lucky. Some people also win the lottery. And even the lucky ones who get their first book published still need practice to edit it, to write the next book, and so on. 

3. Just because you write something doesn't mean it has to be published. Even people who get the first book they ever write published will, most likely, have something that's rejected and unpublished. I know several authors whose first book was published, but then whose second, third, and so on, books were rejected. It doesn't mean you're a failure if you want it to be published and it's not. It only means that you wrote something, it was practice, now it's time to write the next thing.

I also know people who are too scared to start writing because they're afraid the thing they write won't be good enough for publication. Everyone I know who has maintained this attitude is still not published. They still don't have a finished manuscript. Either they never wrote it, or they wrote it and they're editing it to death, to perfect it. Don't be one of these people. Write. Write it the best you can. If it sells, great. If not, write the next thing. Don't stagnate because of fear.

4. If you want a career in writing, you need to write more than one book. Unless you're Harper Lee. Harper Lee made it out okay with just To Kill a Mockingbird. But you're not Harper Lee. Evaluate how you're spending your time. Evaluate whether or not the time you've invested so far into an idea is worth it. 

In YA, the expectation for a traditionally published author is about a book a year. There are exceptions, certainly, on both ends of the spectrum. But I have pretty much always given myself about a year to write and sub a book, becuase from the start, I knew that was the career I wanted. I wanted to be a career author in traditional YA publishing, so I practiced writing under the schedule of a book a year. This meant when, after a year passed and the book wasn't sold...it was time for me to move on. Try writing the next novel. 

This sounds harsh--and it is--but part of the reason why it sounds harsh is because of something known as "sunk costs." I'll talk more about that later, but what I mean by that is that you've sunk a lot of your time and energy into something, and you want to see it pay off. You can't let go of a book because you've invested so much time into it that the idea of it not being "successful" makes you feel bad about the energy and resources you've already funneled into it. Here's the thing: there are no sunk costs in writing. You have invested energy and resources into something, but it's not wasted just because it's not published.