Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Head down

I started a MSS in January. Nothing special. Genre fiction. Today I will complete it. Good, believable characters, and the story sprints along nicely from premise to conclusion, all one hundred and twenty thousand words of it with a cracking denoument. That's pretty good as output goes. Five months from a few hundred words and the roughest of outlines to quite a reasonable piece of work. There's even thoughts of a sequel, although I need to revise what I'm doing with the other two major projects first.

It's the longest piece of work I've ever written, and despite some minor niggles, I'm pretty pleased with the first draft. Now all I have to do is sell it. I'll try New York first of all, then take a punt at some of the Toronto publishing houses.

Rejection slips will come thick and fast in the next few months I'm sure, but in this business, the 'Noes' are the price of the 'Yesses', and getting a business to take a long shot with a relative unknown such as me, with only a handful of stories and articles published under my own name is not going to be a simple proposition. I know no-one in publishing. I never managed to go to University, so never made any contacts who might give me a recommendation. All I have is a large pile of unpublished stuff gradually rotting down to compost, or being chewed into nest material for the mice at my Mother's old house back in England.

There is always the self publication route, but then again, you don't get the marketing assistance that way.