The Journey To My New Novel, Pt. 2
I Will Tell You This: the road to publication can be a rocky one
If you haven’t read part one of this series that will likely take us through the summer, you can do so here. Now let’s get on to Part Two:
When we left off I’d just written the first words of what would become Every Moment Since. But that’s not what it was called then. I titled it Those Who Go Missing, which was the title I used up until I got a contract for it. (We can talk about why the title was changed later, if you’re curious.) The title came out of a press conference scene I’d already envisioned. In the scene the sheriff says that law enforcement works hard not just for those who go missing, but for those who love them. (That scene still exists, and maybe now you’ll see the former title and smile to yourself when you read it. Ahem. I hope you’ll read it.) Moving on.
So I had the title, and I had several thousand words. I was off to the races.
I came home from our little retreat excited about what I was sure would be my tenth novel. I knew that it would be different from what I’d previously done. And I knew that might be an issue with my current publisher. (Publishers typically like you to stay within the same vein of what you’ve been writing for them, as readers come to expect a consistent performance, which is understandable.) But I felt that if I needed to part ways with my publisher in order to get this story out into the world then that would be ok. I was committed to the story.
Or, I thought I was.
About a month after I got home from the writing retreat I had a conversation with a fellow writer who had just had a disheartening conversation with her agent. Her agent had told her not to move forward with the story she was writing because it had two timelines, and neither timeline was a present-tense timeline. Her agent told her that those types of stories just weren’t selling.
My friend knew nothing about the story I’d just begun as she shared this tidbit with me. She had no idea that I, also, had a dual timeline story, and neither timeline was in present-tense. My timelines were in 1985 and 2006. I got off the phone stricken with dread. It felt like my friend had inadvertently just told me my little fledgling book wasn’t gonna get off the ground.
It was late summer of 2020, you see. The times, they were uncertain. Everything felt precarious. Perhaps you remember? And, I honestly don’t know why this one conversation became the blow it was. Perhaps I wasn’t as committed as I believed I was? Perhaps I just wasn’t sure about this new story direction, or my ability to write it? The conversation with my own agent back in April still resounded in my head. She’d been less than confident about my other idea. Maybe I should be less than confident about this one as well? Maybe I no longer understood the market. Maybe the market no longer understood the market. Again, everything felt precarious.
So, this is what I did. I quit writing that story. I pressed “Save” and then I filed the document somewhere deep in the bowels of my computer. I shrugged my shoulders, told myself that it was still early, I hadn’t wasted too much time, and I could always think of a new idea and proceed with that one. But that was not what I did.
Come back for Part Three next week— and thank you to all who’ve read so far. Please consider sharing this with a friend or loved one who likes behind the scenes stuff about books. I’m here to encourage others that, even when it gets hard, the journey is worth it.
Mary Beth I’m glad to kept going. It must be a story that needed to be told!