Do It Now: Reflections on How to Get Published

Courtney Maum

If there is a way to get a book published, I’ve tried it. To date, I have two books published with Penguin Random House (America’s largest publishing house), three books published with the independent presses Catapult and Tin House, a short story turned into an Audible Original on Amazon, a chapbook published with a micropress, and a short story collection that I self-published in my early twenties. Whether you only want to share your work with your family or have dreams of your novel becoming an international bestseller, between print, online publishing, audio, and social media, there’s no shortage of ways to share your writing with the world. Regardless of how you intend to share your work with others, here are my top tips to help you prep a version of your writing that you can be bold about putting out into the world.

Introduce the people in your head

Whether they’re writing fiction or nonfiction, most writers have been carrying their stories in their heads (and hearts) for a long time. They understand their characters’ motivations and they see the world they move through as clearly as if it were their own. But most readers will be coming to your work with no idea of who your main character is or what their world looks like, so it’s important that you show your readers what you see, so they can see it, too.

Regardless of the genre you’re writing in, we should have a sense of who your main character is, what their principal preoccupation is, and where the story is taking place in time and space from the opening pages. This doesn’t mean you have to spell everything out for your readers or make the writing super obvious. On the contrary: worlds and characters can be built up quickly, but in a nuanced way. Simply revisit the opening pages of your favorite books to see how this is done. Underline the first time you get a hint of where the story is taking place geographically. Highlight when the author indicates that something is “off” with their main character, or suggests that the main character isn’t getting a specific thing they want. Next look for an indication of the time period the story takes place in. I bet you’ll find this information in the opening three pages—maybe even in the first two paragraphs.

Clarify who (and what) you’re writing about

One mistake a lot of writers make is introducing their main character(s) by name once, and then never using their name again, resulting in a pileup of pronouns. To avoid this pitfall, use a character’s name for every 3-4 times you use a pronoun (he/she/they). For example: “She just didn’t know what to do. She felt so lost. Annie had simply never confronted such a trying problem before.” Same thing goes for the pronoun “it.” You should define what “it” is so that your reader understands exactly what your character is referring to. “Annie hated it,” is vague and potentially confusing. “Annie hated the fact that she didn’t know whether or not to lie about what her brother had done,” is intriguing and propulsive.

The three-page rule of forward motion

If you take any of the self-paced craft classes I run online, you’ll see that I’m all about making creative writing straightforward, fun, accessible, and empowering. I’m a big believer in pragmatic writing rules and exercises, and the forward-motion rule is one of them. In general, if you are writing a scene that takes place in the past (a flashback or some backstory), it should not exceed three pages. If your writing spends more time than that in the past, it will hinder the forward motion of the narrative and leave your reader wondering whether or not the entire book is going to take place in the past. There are no hard and fast rules in writing, but I do find that making sure you jump back into the present after 2-3 pages of flashback is a great way to ensure that your story has a plot. In my memoir writing class, we’ll learn about the combination of a braided timeline and three-act story structure that pretty much guarantees that your narrative will move correctly back and forth in time.

Stick up for yourself

Whether you are getting ready to query agents (which entails pitching your project to literary agents via email, usually) or you are preparing a full-length book proposal, it’s so important to let the gatekeepers know why you are the only person who could have written this particular story. Sticking up for yourself in this way is a rhetorical term called “exigence,” and it’s something that gets left out when writers are approaching aents and editors, because they think it’s too intimate or “weird” to explain why they spent all this time writing a big book. But exigence isn’t weird, it’s crucial information that will help the agent understand how to package and market your book. If you wrote a novel about a young woman battling breast cancer and you are a radiologist, well then, you can write hard-hitting, reported essays and articles about breast cancer from the medical point of view to journals and magazines. If you are pitching a collection of nonfiction essays about airline attendants and you used to be a stewardess for Pan Am, that is exigence right there, it makes your story sellable and “hot.” In my new book proposal course, we learn all about exigence and how we can best prove that we’re the perfect ambassadors for our writing projects, even if we don’t have a lot of followers online. Believe in yourself and in your book.

Courtney Maum is the author of five books, including the game changing publishing guide BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK DEAL and the forthcoming memoir, THE YEAR OF THE HORSES, Courtney is a writer and book coach hellbent on preserving the joy of art-making in a culture obsessed with turning artists into brands. A nominee for the Joyce Carol Oates prize and the host of the monthly “Beyond Fiction” conversation series at Edith Wharton’s The Mount, Courtney’s essays and articles on creativity have been widely published in outlets like The New York Times and Interview Magazine, and her short story “This is Not Your Fault” was recently turned into an Audible Original. A frequent interviewer of high-profile writers such as Anne Perry, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Edouard Louis, Courtney is also the founder of the learning collaborative, The Cabins. You can sign up for her publishing newsletter and enroll in her online writing classes at CourtneyMaum.com. Credit: Photo by Michelle Gevin.