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| Getting Published |
| If
you’re like I was, you might think that it takes a couple
of months to write and publish a book. |
| In
reality, it takes years. Why so long? |
| First
of all, you—the writer—have to finish the dang thing.
That can take a really long time, what with all those breaks
from your computer to see if there’s anything good to
eat in the fridge and all those other things that you need to
do like clean the guinea pig’s cage because the poor thing
can’t breathe with all that, er, waste product he’s
deposited in there. |
| 
Most serious writers love chocolate. |
You
might also find in the midst of a troublesome paragraph that
there is no clean underwear anywhere in the house. In your search
to solve the mystery of the missing underwear you discover that
aliens have filled your laundry room from floor to ceiling with
dirty clothes. |
| After
you cram as many clothes as you can in the washer, you will
notice that you are starving. You go in search of something
good to eat and—horrors—you realize that there is
no chocolate in the house and, even worse, you are
out of Diet Cokes. |
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| The Great
Carrot Crisis |
| From
the cage in the living room you hear that guinea pig squeaking
really loud. That’s his version of saying, “Hey
Lady, would you give me a blasted carrot!” You peek into
the produce drawer and shudder. There are no carrots. Well,
who could write with a starving guinea pig making such a racket? |
So,
fifty-five years later, you finally finish the manuscript. You
proudly show your story to some friends. They read it and say
things like, “You should have killed more people.”
And, “Eeew, yuck! Everyone used the same metal dipper
to sip water?”
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| Next,
you send the story to a literary agent. |
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Four months later, the agent has still not responded to your
letters and phone calls. You decide that she is dead. You send
it to another agent. And then another. Realizing that all the
agents in the world must be dead, you send your manuscript directly
to a regional publisher who has produced similar kinds of novels. |
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| A Surprise
in the Mail |
| Three
weeks later, you get a fat envelope back in the mail. This is
a really good sign. It’s not big enough to have all 150
pages of your children’s novel in it, yet it is much too
bulky to contain the typical one-page rejection letter. |
This is my office, where I rewrite, and rewrite,
and rewrite.... |
| No
one is home, so you read the letter aloud to your guinea pig.
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| It’s
so exciting—the publisher loves your story and wants to
publish it and would like you to take out one of the main characters
and—hey, wait a minute! They want you to what? Take out
Lizzie? She’s in every chapter. You’d have to rewrite
the whole thing. |
| After
thinking it over and eating a king-size bag of peanut M&Ms,
you realize that these changes will strengthen your story. |
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You make all the changes and find that other parts of the story
can be better, too. The editor loves it and says your book will
be out in two years. By this time, you realize that two years
is really fast. Writers of picture books for young children
often wait seven years or more to see their book in print. |
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A published author at last... |
Then
one day, while the guinea pig is napping, the doorbell rings.
You open the door and take a really heavy box from the delivery
person. Hmmm, what could this be from the publisher? Then you
start screaming. It’s the book! It’s just like that
moment from the movie “Back to the Future” when
Biff carries in the box with Mr. McFly’s new book. Only
your book doesn’t have an alien on the cover. |
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Suddenly,
a loud, squeaking noise fills the room. The doorbell and your
subsequent screaming have woken up the guinea pig. You show
him your book but he’s not impressed. You go to the fridge
and get him a carrot. Some things never change. |
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