How it all started

Thirteen years ago, I had a dream, and I mean that literally. I was in a crowded airtight structure in the middle of a war. Shots were ripping through the walls, and the people inside were shooting back. When the walls were breached, the toxic atmosphere flooded the building, and people began to die. I remember thinking that this is madness, this is suicidal, like this no one survives on either side. But the shooting continued. When I woke up, I started to write, and after a couple of hours I saved a file (on LibreOffice) called "story based on dream.odt." I didn't know it, but I'd started my novel.

It took me a very long time to figure out what the story was about. At first, I just let my imagination run with it and wrote whatever popped into my head. This kept my project going but was no way to write a story. Eventually I needed to settle a few things: 1. In what sort of world is this story set? I needed a plausible setting. 2. What are the central conflicts of the story? To get an answer to the first question, I read some research books. I started with "The World Without Us" to get an idea of just what a world almost without people would look like. I moved on to The Sixth Extinction and then to The Day the Earth Nearly Died and Under a Green Sky. That last one left one hell of an impression on me. The story had always been about how people fail to address a slow moving crisis. Over time, I realized that this was a story about climate change.

An awful lot happened in 13 years. When I started, we were still recovering from the financial crisis and the great recession. Then we had the European Debt Crisis (remember that?) and increasingly bitter political divisions in the USA. I started going to business school in the evening and I had my first child, a son. I joined and then left a writing group. I had a daughter. I bought a house, sold it, and bought another house. I changed jobs twice. Donald Trump was elected president, and I decided that reality was too stupid, absurd, and implausible to make for good fiction. We went through Covid, the hottest and driest summer on record, and the climate related disasters got worse and worse while the governments of the world did next to nothing. 

The events in the world around me gave me the answer to the second question. This is a story about what good people do to try to survive in a world gone mad. It's a story about whether humanity is doomed to self destruct from its own flaws, or if there really is hope for us after all. It's about how the individual swims through the tide of history not knowing if he or she is doing the right thing even if they have the best of intentions. Basically, it's a story about big ideas told through the experience of ordinary people in terrible circumstances. Sometime in 2019, I finished my first draft. I participated in a novel swap and got some good feedback (thanks Oscar.) I sent it to friends and to a professional editing service and put the whole thing through its first big revision. Then I started pitching it to agents. 

That last step was the most frustrating part of the entire process. I understand that agents get hundreds of queries a week and pick up 5 or so new clients a year, so by necessity they skip over most everything. However, I found the whole process to just be a frustrating mess that went nowhere. Let me list the problems in bullet point form. 

• Agents want pitch to be personalized. They want to feel like they have been carefully selected for a pitch instead of being just one person on a list. However, they reject 99% of what they get out of hand so anyone looking for representation must by necessity pitch to a lot of agents... so you need to look them up, find their written interviews or podcasts or other material to try to hone your appeal just right. This is a gigantic waste of time. 
• In looking through agents on manustrciptwishlist and other sites, you generally get one of two things: either an incredibly specific descriptions of the story they are looking for ("I want a story about the transgenered starship captain who has a slow burn forbidden romance and is enemies with a sympathetic villain in a high stakes battle involving magic and sports that will determine the fate of the universe") or hopelessly vague ("I'm looking for character driven fiction with a strong voice.") In the former case, I suggest that the agent should become an author and write the story that they claim to want so badly. In the latter, I have nothing at all to go on. Why pick you as an agent? What do I write in a query letter to convince you I have what you're looking for? 
• -Almost every single agent wants to represent 'underrepresented voices.' This might have been brave or needed once but now it's so widespread that it's a cliché at best and a contradiction in terms at worst. If everyone wants to represent underrepresented voices, how can they be underrepresented? Agents apparently share the current generation of American's unhealthy obsession with identity. It leaves little room for the many other problems that demand our attention. 
• -I've read some posts or comments on the theme of "what do I learn from rejection." People say that you should buck up and become more determined and learn from why you have been turned down. If rejection came with an explanation, it would be valuable. Instead, it comes with a generic rejection letter or you are simply ignored. 

Now, I did learn from the experience. Little by little, my pitch got a bit better. If you talk to a brick wall long enough, you can spot more of the flaws in the pitch just from the sound of your own voice. I also ran it by my wife so many times that she got really tired of it. -I also tried out manuscript academy, which allows you to pay agents $100 per hour or more to evaluate your pitch. I was willing to do this twice but no more. At some point it turns into "pay this group hundreds of dollars to tell you why they are ignoring you." Enough is enough. 

I've found writing to be deeply fulfilling, and it's no exaggeration ato say that it's added meaning to my life. I find receiving critical feedback on my writing very useful. I have found pitching to agents to be a black hole for my time that also makes me miserable, and I'm just done with it. Granted, self publishing is also going to be time consuming, but when I think over the tasks ahead of me, I'm excited. When I think about finding more agents and pitching again, I feel depressed and exhausted. Thankfully, we live in an age where anyone can self publish to kindle and find an audience, and based on the comments I've gotten from those who have read my manuscript, I'm confident that at least some people will enjoy what I've written. 

When the gatekeeper ignores you, it's time to bypass the gatekeeper. 

Self publishing involves a few big tasks. Here they are. 

1. Find an editor for developmental editing, proofreading, and fact checking. 

2. Get a cover design. 

3. Build an author website (with some help) 

4. Develop a marketing plan and budget. 

5. Get your book out there and launch. 

I'll write about each one as I go through the process.