The Long and Winding Road

The exact date I started writing War of Nutrition is lost in the mists of history, but it was a long time ago. The earliest date on the oldest file I have in my WoN folder is in the second half of 2000 - a first draft synopsis - but obviously that's the day it was last saved, not when I started it.

It's changed a lot since then. I finished the (final version of the) plot in 2001 and it took seven years (count 'em) to travel from there to the end of the first full draft. I've posted before about how I'm the antithesis of a writer who writes "because he must." Most of the time I feel compelled NOT to write. And then guilty about it.

But somehow, between the house moves and the decorating and the holidays and the day job (*spit*), the book what I wrote got writted. And edited for grammar correction. But of course, as writers the world over will tell you, writing a book is the easy part. So it was that I began the Age of Submissions, back in August 2008.

Even though every word I read on the subject of querying agents unanimously warned it would be a long and heart-breaking process, I was convinced the first one I sent out would result in a deal. Probably for a million dollars. I'd crafted a knock-out query letter. No-one could resist. 50 query letters (and three revisions of the letter content) later I had to admit my experience was, well, long. I can't say it was heart-breaking. No-one had said the book was crap. Mainly because no-one had read it. I'd had no requests for full, or even partial, submissions. It was all "we're too busy" or "this isn't what we're looking for." So rather than being heartbroken I was just meh.

Until, almost a year later, I read the magic words: "Thank you for your query. We read it with some interest and would like to see the full manuscript." I hardly slept that night with excitement, daft bugger that I am. The 12-week reading period elapsed and when I heard nothing I followed up. They weren't still locked in thrall at the greatness of my prose. They'd simply not bothered to say no.

After another year I had a second request for a partial, followed (five months later) by a second rejection. It was at this point I decided radical surgery was needed. Two-and-a-half years of perspective allowed me to see what should have been clear much earlier: I had an 80,000-word novel hiding in a 100,000-word fat suit.

I rewrote. Hard.

And this time, even my inner self - the one who always tells the truth - was happy with the result. This version was The One. I sent out a few more queries, but everyone was still too busy. However there was a distinct change in the tone of the rejections. They were almost unanimous in declaring the novel a "strong project" or an "intriguing idea" and even went so far as to express regret that they had no space to take me on. That, combined with the experiences of one or two friends and the urging of a few more, led me to decide to abandon the traditional publishing route on whose door I had spent more than three years knocking, in favour of epublishing. And the full story of how I came to that decision, is a post for another day!