Time To Get Back To The Basics

Over the last few days, I have seen more and more submissions coming in where authors have been making very rookie mistakes. What is more frustrating is that many of these authors are people who have been around for some time and should have known better. Unfortunately, it is not just them. More and more writers are sending in submissions that are destined to fail immediately. So the question is, why is this happening? 

In all honesty, it all comes down to writers needing to get back to the basics of everything! Writers need to not just figure out how to "market" books, but they need to revisit EVERYTHING! This includes how to plot a story, how to build a story, how to create characters that are believable, and so forth. 

Once we take care of that, authors need to take some time to learn about the entire submission process. For this, it includes how to find editors and agents, how to know what they are interested in, how to write a query letter, how to write a submission and all of that fun stuff. 

I know some of you are saying you are already doing this, and I am sure you are. HOWEVER (you knew this was coming) who are you learning these skills from? I have talked about this problem earlier this week, but there are a lot of people out there, struggling with their own careers and yet, feel the need to teach others how to do it (when they are not able to be successful on their own). 

This is going to take a "all hands on deck" approach. First of all, authors need to get back to learning how to truly study literature. Remember, this is all of that stuff you learned in junior high and high school. It is time to study how authors made those stories tick! How did authors like Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bronte and so forth create those great stories. 

Next, we need to get back to joining professional writing organizations. Sure, those writing groups you formed with your friends are great support systems and sure, those of you who just want to do this all virtually in your Zoom meetings is fine, but it is those larger organizations that will bring together greater resources for you.

Now, let's talk about those larger organizations. QUIT only promoting independent and self-publishing. All that this did in the past was to create workshop after workshop of how to guess your way in the business and how to market your books. As I said earlier this week, it might not be the marketing that is creating your problems, it might be the quality of the writing. These organizations need to bring back craft sessions, working writing sessions and bring in the professionals. Quit holding grudges against these people because to things that happened (or you thought happened) in the past. This is becoming circular. The big editors and agents are not coming to your conferences because you are not listening to them and you are providing them nothing to work with.

Finally, as authors, it is going to take an attitude change on your part. Success in writing is not about what other people are doing to you. It starts with you. I am going to remind you of 4 questions I think I have mentioned sometime before here on the blog:

1. What do you want?
2. What are you doing now to get it?
3. How is that helping?
4. What should you be doing?

Let's try to make 2025 a great year!