Book in Progress, Part 6: I Believe in My Book
by Joe Taylor To be brutally honest, it's been worse than brutal. It's been silent. A month after Labor Day, when I thought my responses from prospective agents might pick…
by Joe Taylor To be brutally honest, it's been worse than brutal. It's been silent. A month after Labor Day, when I thought my responses from prospective agents might pick…
My first couple of days of submitting to agents were exhausting and extremely frustrating. I would identify a target agent then send her (90% are women) whatever she requested. About a quarter of them came back immediately as undeliverable. Thinking, I guess, that "this agent was my only hope" I'd keep trying to find a better email address or resending it. Finally, I realized she may be out of business or posted a bad address and moved on.
As my Beta reader, Jo discovered repetition, describing the same era of my career in different pieces or talking about the same aspect of the business in two pieces. She did me a huge favor in pointing out that the reader would have trouble following my stories and trying to place them in some coherent chronological order. From this came her most important suggestion-make the book a memoir, rather than a collection.
Publishing books is a big step, but it feels like the right directions for TWJ. We will continue to produce quarterly literary magazines, hold workshops and events, but now we have one more opportunity to offer our growing community of storytellers. And more books by more writers in the western PA Wilds is right in line with our mission to elevate and empower regional authorship.