A Novel Journey: Part Two

This is Part Two of my article A Novel Journey. You can read Part One at www.associatedcontent.com/article/198065/a_novel_journey_part_one.html

In Part One of this article, I described how National Novel Writing Month played a critical part in my completion of my first novel, God, Guns, and the Perfect Chicken-Fried Steak. After all the years of trying to finish and never even getting close, when the first draft was finally completed in November 2005 I thought the hard part was over. I was wrong.

After leaving the first draft in a drawer for about six weeks to give myself some distance from it, I went back and started the second draft. What I learned was what none of the how-to books on writing tell you. Revising and editing is even more difficult than writing the first draft. You struggle with what to cut, what to leave in, how to keep up with the plot lone over 200-plus pages. It can make you a little nuts.

Once the revision nightmare was over, and after having a freelance editor make a final pass, I did what you're supposed to do next: I sent query letters to agents. Lots of them. Six months later I'm still getting rejection letters on queries I sent in October 2006. It wouldn't bother me as much if they weren't all form letter addressed to "Dear Author". I wonder if anyone besides the mail clerk even read the damn things. As inspiration, I have around 30 of these rejection letters tacked above my computer.

Oddly enough, this semi depressing turn of events led me back to something I had seen on the National Novel Writing Month website during the 2006 contest. NaNoWriMo has an agreement with the Print On Demand (POD) company Lulu (www.lulu.com): at the end of each year's contest, Lulu will print one copy of each contestant's book for free. Since traditional publishing was not being particularly kind to me, I though I would at least look at the self-publishing option, and I started with Lulu.