{"id":1181,"date":"2011-08-21T20:00:43","date_gmt":"2011-08-22T03:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2011-08-21T20:00:43","modified_gmt":"2011-08-22T03:00:43","slug":"hows-the-book-coming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/2011\/08\/21\/hows-the-book-coming\/","title":{"rendered":"How’s The Book Coming?"},"content":{"rendered":"
How\u2019s the book coming?<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
I\u2019ve been asked that quite a lot lately, and I reply, \u201cIt\u2019s done,\u201d which is true \u2013 my memoir, The Troubles, is good enough to publish. So what am I waiting for?<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
And that\u2019s where I am today \u2013 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\u2019s success. So that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been working on, that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been waiting for, and that\u2019s why I asked for help.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
Food for thought \u2013 once a book is \u201cwritten\u201d 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 \u201cfirst timer\u201d. And, occasionally, the writer actually discovers something he didn\u2019t 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\u2019d 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\u2019t 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. <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n
The day before yesterday I began a blog entry to do with being at a cross-roads of sorts. I\u2019m at the point where I\u2019m wondering if I should bite the bullet, ignore my gut and go for an agent. After all, that\u2019s what people seem to expecting of me. But I ask myself is what I want most simply to have an agent? No, it\u2019s 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\u2019s thoughts. Stay tuned.<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How\u2019s the book coming? I\u2019ve been asked that quite a lot lately, and I reply, \u201cIt\u2019s done,\u201d which is true \u2013 my memoir, The Troubles, is good enough to publish. So what am I waiting for? I finished the first … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-troubles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/richardpnixon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}