I gave a talk to some students at an MFA program and they appreciated it so I thought I’d share it here on my blog. It was called Ten Tips For Aspiring Writers and I’ll post the tips one at a time.
Inform yourself: Understand the publishing process, what goes on and what you can expect from the moment you send out that query letter. Know what publishing houses publish what kinds of books. Understand the trends. Read the trade blogs, including Publisher’s Lunch, PW Daily and Galleycat. Understand that publishing is in essence a trend-driven industry; even if your book may not be a part of whatever the current trend is – vampire romances, for example – that’s ok. Of all the genres, I would say that literary fiction is still the most deeply affected by the recession and the change to the digital landscape. Publishers seem to be at a loss how to publish books for which sales used to be ‘review-driven’. Newspapers are dying, review space is shrinking. And yet more people than ever are writing about books. It’s a new paradigm, one in which publishers are trying to figure out their place. Staying informed gives you more control over the process.
ELLE Magazine names SECRET DAUGHTER one of its top three books!
All wannabe writers who are looking for some advice about how to go from writing to getting published, please do read Justin’s blog . He has real, sensible and very helpful thoughts on the whole process and I’m not just saying that because he is my client.
One thing I did not really think about is how it would make me feel to write for public consumption. I think I’m of a generation that straddles the preceding, incredibly private one, and the one following mine that matter-of-factly shares matters I think of as terribly intimate. I’m realizing that it feels sort of presumptuous to me that I would have something to say that others would actually consider interesting. But it’s exciting, too – -a new challenge to be conquered. Today is the official launch of Ayesha Pande Literary and my accompanying entree into the world of social media.
As I am preparing my talk at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop next month, I started thinking about the categories we use in publishing. It’s fair to say that the students at the Workshop write what we would describe as ‘literary fiction’, but what exactly is that? When I worked as an editor, we used to talk about plot-driven versus character-driven fiction, the former supposedly being in the domain of mainstream, or popular, fiction while the latter is the hallmark of literary fiction. During a recent conversation with a client he told me that plot was not something he was taught in his (extremely excellent) MFA program. It made me wonder: is there something … shameful about writing a novel with a plot? Whoever said that a literary novel can’t have a strong plot? As an agent, I dream of finding a novel that is beautifully written and is a suspenseful pageturner at the same time. So listen up all you creative writing students, soon to be MFA graduates: ‘literary’ does not have to mean no plot; and a story that turns on the transformation of its characters can also include dramatic and suspenseful twists and turns.
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