How’s the book coming?
I’ve been asked that quite a lot lately, and I reply, “It’s done,” which is true – my memoir, The Troubles, is good enough to publish. So what am I waiting for?
I finished the first real draft of my memoir back in 2009 and immediately set out to get an agent. Of the three I contacted, one didn’t respond, the second visited my website an astounding fourteen times and spent a total of some hours there but then never contacted me, and the third wrote me a personal note saying I had a good book but that I needed a platform.
And that’s where I am today – building the platform. Why is that important? Because, my friends, the expert advice from agents is that a platform is not only the key to getting an agent but also critical to any book’s success. So that’s what I’ve been working on, that’s what I’ve been waiting for, and that’s why I asked for help.
Food for thought – once a book is “written” it goes through several sessions of editing, revisions and rewrites until the final manuscript is presentable to an agent. It takes time to write a book, and even more time to get it even close to where it needs to be, especially for a “first timer”. And, occasionally, the writer actually discovers something he didn’t know before, something important enough to trigger needing to look at the story from a different perspective, and that takes time, too. If The Troubles were a simple work of fiction I’d have likely had an easier go of it. But my memoir involves real people with real emotions, and some of those people have risen from the murkiness of the past and made me realize that they weren’t the cardboard memories I once thought they were. Some have even stepped up to the plate and provided me some rich detail of how things were back thirty or so years ago. That had to be accounted for, too, and that took more time.
The day before yesterday I began a blog entry to do with being at a cross-roads of sorts. I’m at the point where I’m wondering if I should bite the bullet, ignore my gut and go for an agent. After all, that’s what people seem to expecting of me. But I ask myself is what I want most simply to have an agent? No, it’s not. I want more than that. Much more. That means for now I wait, I continue to polish, and I come up with ideas to get my story to the forefront of people’s thoughts. Stay tuned.
