Thoughts on Writing
By Julie Anne Long
©2005 Julie Ann Long. All Rights Reserved.
If you’re an aspiring romance author and you’re reading this, it’s your lucky day: you have a stellar opportunity to not be like me.
I wrote my first book, THE RUNAWAY DUKE, in a vacuum. Well, OK, I’m exaggerating a little (it’s my job as a writer to exaggerate a little), but still: a few years ago, there I was merrily typing away, la la la, never dreaming there was more to being published than sending a book to an agent, who would then, of course, sell it to a publisher, and the rest would be…well, I’m not even sure I gave much thought to what the rest would be. I suppose I did imagine a life of glamorous independence (working independently has always been my goal) and relative wealth, maybe a home with an indoor swimming pool and a helicopter pad…
But truthfully, this is all I knew: write the book; send it to an agent. Though I was a romance reader (well, I’m a reader, period—I read everything) I didn’t know I was writing a “romance;” I didn’t know romances had specific page length requirements; I didn’t know that the wealth of sub-genres all had different names (Paranormal! Regency-set! Medieval!); I didn’t know a thing about promotion. I just thought I was writing a story (a 500-page story) set during the Regency period involving two people who fall in love. My agent enlightened me—“It’s a romance, Julie”—and, to her credit, managed not to end that sentence with an eye-roll and the word “duh.” Warner then worked with me to trim the story to a more acceptable romance length (375-400 pages)… and after the initial celebratory giddiness (“Hurrah! I sold a book!”) ebbed, the reality avalanche ensued.
A little knowledge ahead of time would have saved me a good deal of angst and acrobatic time management. Because soon I was in the midst of revising one book, writing another, designing and building a website, frantically learning about the publishing process in general, learning about promotion, responding to a slew of emails, and more—all while I was working a day job and conducting every day life, like grocery shopping and laundry and bathing, etc. And truthfully, for about a year, it felt as though I had three full time jobs.
When I finally left my day job in October of last year, I thought: “Hurrah! Now I’ll have time to see my friends and take a vacation and start my next book!” Instead… well, I’m reminded of this big old pickup truck my dad had when I was in high school: it got about eight miles to the gallon, but it had an auxiliary tank, and if you were running low on gas, you could switch over to that tank and cruise for a little while longer. I can’t tell you how many times I played gas roulette with that truck. I’m proud to say I only completely ran out of gas a couple of times.
What I’m getting at is this: apparently, by the time I quit my job last year, I’d been running on my auxiliary tank for quite a while—and right after that, I completely ran out of gas. Took about a month of flat-out resting (lots of sleeping, cartoons, magazines with pictures of pretty people) before I was fit for anything else.
So don’t play roulette with your gas tanks! If you’re an aspiring romance author and you’re reading this, you’re probably already part of a romance community, which is fantastic—keep it up! And before you send your masterwork off to agents, you can greatly benefit by learning all you can about the business in general ahead of time. Things like the life cycle of a book—all the hands and stages (there are MANY) it passes through from the moment the publisher buys it to the moment it appears on the shelves. Things like average print runs and distribution methods. Things like self-promotion techniques, from building your own website to banner advertising, blogs and newsletters. Things like who publishes, edits, and reads your sub-genre, and the web communities devoted to it. And this way, you can spend more of your precious energy thoroughly savoring your moment of glory when you get “the call”— and of course, working on your next book. Good luck!