by Patricia Bradley, @PTBradley1
Happy New Year! As one of the first blog posts to kick off 2019, I pondered what to write and came up with five things I wish I’d known when I first started writing.
- I thought when I sent my first manuscript out I’d hear a Yes! back in a matter of weeks. Uh, not happening. Traditional publishing is a s-l-o-w business. It takes months, maybe even years for a proposal to wend its way through an agent and then through a publishing house. Unless it’s a no, and then an author might get an email within twenty-four hours saying “I’m sorry but this doesn’t meet our current needs.”
- This doesn’t meet our current needs doesn’t necessarily mean your writing is terrible. It could mean that the publishing house already has a story under contract similar to yours. And that doesn’t mean they stole your story, either. As hard as it is to believe, editors routinely get pitches for similar stories. It could also mean it just doesn’t fit their house. Be sure to research the editors you pitch to and make sure they publish the kind of stories you write.
- Learn what it means to “show, don’t tell”. I found one of my old manuscripts a while back and oh, my! It was full of telling the reader how the heroine felt instead of letting the reader experience her emotions. A good book on this subject is Understanding Show Don’t Tell by Janice Hardy.
- I wish I’d know how important it was to connect with other writers. For various reasons, I wrote in a vacuum, no writer friends no critique group, no one to point me in the right direction.
- I also wish I’d know about writer organizations like American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), Romance Writers of America (RWA) and Sisters in Crime, to name a few. Through these organizations, I have entered contests where I received great feedback, taken classes—and if you haven’t taken advantage of the free classes offered by ACFW, you should!
- One thing that has helped me tremendously has been working in Scrivener. While it isn’t for everyone, it has been a God-send for me. Scrivener is set up the way my brain thinks. And that’s the key to choosing a word processing program. It has to fit the way you think, whether it’s Word, Scrivener or something else.
- Last but not least, set goals. If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time!
So, if you’ve been writing a while, what are some things you wished you had known early on?
It’s Elvis Week in Memphis, and homicide Detective Rachel Sloan isn’t sure her day could get any stranger when aging Elvis impersonator Vic Vegas asks to see her. But when he produces a photo of her murdered mother with four Elvis impersonators–one of whom had also been murdered soon after the photo was taken–she’s forced to reevaluate. Is there some connection between the two unsolved cases? And could the recent break-in at Vic’s home be tied to his obsession with finding his friend’s killer?
When yet another person in the photo is murdered, Rachel suddenly has her hands full investigating three cases. Lieutenant Boone Callahan offers his help, but their checkered romantic past threatens to get in the way. Can they solve the cases before the murderer makes Rachel victim number four?
Winner of an Inspirational Readers’ Choice Award in Suspense and a 2018 Carol finalist,Patricia Bradley lives in North Mississippi with her rescue kitty, Suzy. Her romantic suspense books include the Logan Point series and the Memphis Cold Case Novels. She also has written sweet romances for Harlequin Heartwarming available as e-books.