What a surprise—last night I got a note from an old roommate at Columbia, Richard Beeson, whom I hadn't heard from in many years. He told me about the long, roundabout path he had to take to his first novel, Seduction of a Wanton Dreamer, and I thought it might be of interest to other writers:
I was so immersed in the music business that I had little time for anything else. I did keep trying to do my own writing (the reason I went to Columbia in the first place), but an opera job at Lincoln Center is all-consuming.
I became orchestra manager at NYC Opera, thinking that would give me more free time. Big miscalculation. I started this book in 1988, the year after I became orchestra manager, and managed to finish the first part (which I thought then was the whole book) in 1991, but it didn't fly.
I kept puttering with it, but simply didn't have the time to do it justice, until finally in late 1999 I bailed out of the job and "retired" as of Feb. 2000. Then I spent a year or so going through all my notes, including all the dreams I had logged. I even made a database of them.
Slowly I managed to formulate the plot and characters for the rest of the tale. I began to think of it as a many-book series, probably seven. When I had finished 3, I found an agent, but after a few months she said she didn't know what to do with them. She suggested I write a mystery instead (based on some of the material in the big books).
I did that, and had just finished it, when I was diagnosed with the big C, head and neck, stage 4. (This was in early 2004.) I managed to come back from that, but the experience changed my whole approach to my writing.
I left that agent and spent the next 4 years rewriting the big book into one book comprising three parts. Also rewrote the "mystery," making it a thriller. I found a team of agents who were willing to represent the thriller, but they didn't even want to look at the book that really mattered. After a year, they gave up on the thriller.
At that point, I said to hell with it, I might as well self-publish. I had always been loath to follow that route, but the way the publishing industry was going, and given my age, I didn't think I had much choice. It could take me another five years to find an agent for a weird book like Seduction, and how many more years for the agent to find the publisher, etc. etc. This way it took less than a year to get the book "on the shelf," as it were. Also got to design my own cover, which I couldn't have done otherwise.
So now it's out, and in a few months I'll bring out the thriller.
Of course I'm delighted that Richard's brought out his book, especially after so many years, and I wish him every success with it.
The publishing industry is very fickle. Editors buy what marketing departments tell them will sell. What they won't touch with a barge pole one year is hot property the next - like platform shoes. In the meantime, self-publishing sites like Lulu allow writers to print up copies as people want them, to get closure' for the novel so they can get on with something else. Keep sending it out; if it's good its time will come. And keep writing new material. Stephen King had to write four novels before he found a publisher, and then the editor wanted all his back catalogue. Each book you finish is one in the bank for the future.
Posted by: dirtywhitecandy | June 02, 2009 at 02:58 AM
What an inspiring story!
Posted by: cindy | July 02, 2009 at 06:14 AM
I think non-fiction books do better on self-publishing sites. For literary fiction I have no hope.
Posted by: Shruti Chandra Gupta | July 10, 2009 at 01:03 AM