BookLife

Well. It’s happened.

You’ve been tapped. Touched. Selected. You have received communication from the distant, bustling publication world – probably via agent – and have been told that they want you. You are now, surely, anointed, blessed, poised to ascend into the heavens and take your place within the firmament as one of the hallowed constellations of the literary world.

Except kind of not. When they first start out, writers typically conceptualize their careers as occurring in huge increments, usually structured around a “I have to get ____” mentality. It usually goes:

1. I have to get my book finished.
2. I have to get an agent.
3. I have to get published.
4. I have to figure out how to deal with my huge success, like what to do with my plethora of purebred Shetland ponies and whether these ponies understand and appreciate my guitar music

But that’s (huge surprise coming) not actually it at all. It does not, unfortunately, follow the simple structure of “caterpillar -> chrysalis -> butterfly.” There’s a lot of crunching, observing, thinking, stressing, hair-splitting, and good ol’ fashioned shit-eating that comes with being a writer. When you’re down in the trenches, trying to move your career forward just a few inches more, those gigantic milestone increments completely dissolve.

For instance, if you’ve just gotten an agent, they’re not just going to tap an editor somewhere and say, “Here, publish this,” and off we go to press. It’s likely your agent is going to ask you to revise, and re-revise, and rethink. Because they want the work to be ready. Agents really only get a handful of chances to give editors a book, and they’ll need every chance to count.

So, listen to them. They know a lot. They know what editors are looking for. If you’ve got a good one, they’ll try and make your work “more of itself” – always a good thing – rather than saying, “Throw some vampires in there, and maybe some teen girls.”

Remember – if you question the importance of any scene or line, cut it. If you’re questioning it, the reader will likely skip it. You don’t want white noise in your writing.

And then, once you’ve trimmed the fat, it’s back to the rejection process. Your work will go to editors, and many of them – most of them – will say, “Sorry, no.” This rarely has anything to do with the quality of your work. When someone says, “It just wasn’t a good fit,” they likely mean it – it didn’t fit with the schedule, their marketing, the brand, anything.

As always, keep trying. Learn from your bruises. And listen. Writing is work – keep working.

I’m thrilled that Morgan and her crew are taking over Booklifenow.com and giving it a breath of fresh air. I think it’ll be an essential resource now for years to come. — Jeff VanderMeer

When Jeff VanderMeer first asked me about taking over BookLifeNow, my first response was, “Wow, really?” Once I finally got over that feeling of “I can’t believe he thought to ask me,” I wondered what that would look like, and why I should be the one to take on something like this. I already blog over at Inkpunks about writing process and survival tips and general cheerleading for creative types. What more could I, a newly-published author, have to say about surviving publishing in the 21st century?

Obviously I said yes. But along the way I had to really consider what this site would be, and what it would be to me. I spoke with quite a few friends about it (many of whom you will see listed on the Staff page) and we settled on a vision for BookLifeNow and its future content: the business and technical ins and outs of publishing, and how to get through it. Writing, publishing, editing, cover design, book packaging, translating royalty statements, contract terms, rights, everything that goes into the business, we’re going to discuss.

But why us? And why on earth am I a part of this? When I first began writing for Inkpunks, I thought, who am I to say anything about writing? And as we’re launching BookLifeNow, I’m asking myself the same exact thing.

For me, writing on sites like this has been a learning experience. Being a part of Inkpunks has taught me a lot. I learned so much about writing, about process and craft, and about myself as a writer. When Sandra Wickham pinged me in an email to join Inkpunks, to help her start this great resource, I had that same starry-eyed reaction of “Wow, really?” Now, after over a year of posting and thinking about craft, I feel like I’ve grown, and like I can speak somewhat intelligently on the matter of writing. And now I see that same opportunity for growth with BookLifeNow.

Over this past year, I’ve discovered I have a lot of questions about publishing. Technical questions. Hard questions, especially for someone who struggles with finance and occasionally gets lost in legalese. Questions about book tours. Questions about signings. And it’s not always easy to find the answers. Sometimes even asking can feel awkward or uncomfortable, depending on the question.

And if I’m asking these questions, I’m sure there are others are asking them too. So now, when we get answers, and when we learn things, we’re going to share them with you.

If you look at the Staff page, you’ll see there’s a lot of knowledge sitting over there. Award-winning authors, editors of magazines and anthologies, publicists, people with marketing experience, seriously tech-savvy folks, artists, a great group of people with talent and knowledge all across the board. We’ll be speaking from our personal experiences, what we’ve learned in our own careers, and what we’ve learned from speaking to others. We’ll also have plenty of guest posts, to fill in the gaps where we are still learning and growing.

Jeff said that he believes this site will be “an essential resource now for years to come.” And we’re certainly going to work very hard to live up to that expectation.