Thursday, 22 October 2009

• A Path. Not a Road Map

  There is no single path to publication.  No best path.  No right path.  As the technology advances and the publishing industry evolves, there is an ever-widening array of paths.  And so, as one of the authors who is participating this Saturday at the Poisoned Pen Web Convention, I was asked to submit an essay telling the story of my personal path to publication.  I figured I'd give you guys a sneak peek, because, to be honest, you've seen much of the essay before, in various blog posts.  (PPWebCon is a virtual convention for writers and readers of the mystery genre.  Check it out.)
  
  
  

  The Long and Winding Road to Publication
  Jeff Markowitz

  http://jeffmarkowitzmysteries.com

  
  
  "When you die, I believe, God isn't going to ask you what you published.  God's going to ask you what you wrote." (McNally, T.M. "Big Dogs and Little Dogs," in Martone, Michael, and Susan Neville. 2006. Rules of thumb: 73 authors reveal their fiction writing fixations. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer's Digest Books).
  
  There's a certain wisdom to that remark, but, with all due respect to McNally and to God, the Almighty isn't in my target demographic.  God, perhaps, will read my unpublished manuscripts, but the ladies in the Hungry Readers Book Club won't read my books unless they're published.
  
  I have been an unpublished author, a self-published author and a traditionally published author, so I believe I may have some perspective on the subject.  There is a difference, although the difference is not necessarily in the writing.  In my own experience, being a traditionally published author is more work.  It's also more fun.  It's not necessarily more profitable (for the author).  And it's not necessarily better writing.  It's entirely possible that the best manuscript I've ever written is the one that is unpublished and will never be published.  But when you're traditionally published, they teach you the secret handshake.  And you get the decoder ring.
  
  It took me thirteen years to write my first manuscript.  Twenty-seven years if you count the re-writes.   The Last Bodhisattva isn’t a mystery.  It's a modern Buddhist parable, a cross between On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, and Monkey, a 500 year-old Chinese folk novel generally attributed to Wu Cheng-En.  I began writing the book in 1975, at the age of 23, and wrote on-and-off for thirteen years, completing it (for the first time) in 1988.  Believing I had a publishable novel (and knowing nothing about agents, or publishers, or, frankly, anything at all about the book business), I bought The Writer's Handbook and began sending out queries.  I spent the next year collecting rejections.  Actually, I considered it a promising sign when I received a rejection.  Mostly, my queries went unanswered.  I tucked the manuscript away in a file cabinet and went about my life.
  
  And every few years, for the next fourteen years, I pulled The Last Bodhisattva out of the cabinet and did a re-write.  The last time I attempted a re-write, I had just turned fifty and I was having a very hard time relating to the character that I had first written nearly three decades earlier.  I did a complete re-write, framing the story as a memoir.  Satisfied that I had successfully finished the story, I put The Last Bodhisattva back in the file cabinet.
  
  That final re-write did something I hadn't anticipated.  It motivated me to start writing again.  I had an idea, something about putting a character on a back road in the New Jersey Pine Barrens in the hour before the sun comes up.  Five months later, Who is Killing Doah's Deer was finished.  I bought a new copy of The Writer’s Handbook and sent out another series of badly written queries.
  
  But the publishing world had changed since 1988.  Someone told me about print-on-demand and directed me to iUniverse.  I don’t think very many people realize that six years ago the Mystery Writers of America had a publishing agreement with iUniverse.  As a result in 2004, I joined MWA and published my first mystery with iUniverse.
  
  It certainly could have ended there.  I now realize how fortunate I was to make the jump from self-publishing to a traditional publisher.  Few authors are able to bridge that divide.   But I continued to write and I took advantage of my membership with MWA to learn more about the craft and the business of writing.
  
  And I never forgot a piece of advice from that 1988 Writers Handbook.  In an essay entitled, “Everything You Need to Know about Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes,” Stephen King offered twelve essential tips, starting with “Be talented.”  Now, it would be hard to quibble with King’s advice.  But what has stayed with me now for two decades was his definition of talent –
  
  “If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.” (King, Stephen.  “Everything You Need to Know about Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes,” in Burack, Sylvia K. 1988.  The Writer’s Handbook.  Boston: The Writer, Inc).
  
  In 2006, Five Star published A Minor Case of Murder.   Thirty-one years after starting to write my first, unpublished, manuscript, I had written something for which someone had sent me a check and I’d paid the light bill (if not the mortgage) with the money.
  
  The Last Bodhisattva never did work as a novel.  But it did make for a pretty good short story.  In 2006, The Sound Bite was published in woman's corner magazine.
  
  And just last week, Five Star released my third mystery, It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Murder.  Which is a good thing.  Because I have another utility bill.

   

  • 8:06 AM
  • 46 Views
  • 10 eProps
  • 6 Comments