I needed this advice from Nancy Holder.
I started a fiction piece a few months back in a writing class. I don’t know where the piece is going or even what it is. All I know is I started it to satisfy a young adult literature writing class requirement. I am extremely frustrated because I can’t seem to figure out where I want the main character, Kia Parker, to go, what I want her to be. I’m coddling her too much, as if she were me, or someone else I love, instead of pushing her out into the world where she will surely be hurt, disappointed, infuriated.
What Holder’s advice says to me, is that I have to see it through, even if it doesn’t end up being a novel, even if it has no chance of ever being published. I must do it so I can get on with my life. Right now it’s like an itch, way down underneath a sweaty, thick cast on my leg. Somehow I’m going to have to find some way to get to it.
The interviewer asks, “What about the novice writer is there anything to offer there? How about heading into the recently exploding self-publishing arena if one has a hard time getting a mainstream publishing contract?”
Holder replies, "To the novice writer: read, write, network. There's no other way to do it than to do it. Writers write every day. Write it, finish it, and move on to the next one. It's very important to finish things even if you think they're terrible. You need to read everything and you need to make contacts and get the skinny. Social media makes it happen even for the shy. Some self-published writers have gone on to great success. I'm thinking of Coleen Houck, who self-published her first one or two books in a trilogy, got an agent who asked her not to self-publish the next one, and is a New York Times bestselling author now."
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