The Holy Trinty of Salable Writing: 3 Steps to Publishable Prose
I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.
–novelist Peter De Vries
There are three steps to producing salable work: reading, writing, and getting feedback. These are the holy trinity of writing to sell.
1. Reading
Reading the”comps”–competing and comparable books–will enable you to do three things:
* See what other books don’t have that might provide opportunities for you to make your book different and better
* Know what agents, editors, and book buyers will expect in your book. Then set literary goals for what your book
* Find out how comps have sold, who published them, and what authors do to promote their work. Choose one or more authors to use as models and to set publishing goals for your book.
2. Writing
Because readers may not get past the first line of your book, it has to be written with all of the craft and creativity you can bring to it. Here are the three challenges you have to meet to accomplish that:
* Research what you need to know
* Establish a workstyle: the time, tools, and techniques that work best for you. Do you like to write in the morning or at night? Do you like to write the first draft by hand? Would it be better for you to write the whole manuscript first or outline it? The only right answers to these questions are those that lead to your best work.
* Write as many drafts as it takes to convince yourself that you’ve written your proposal or manuscript as well as you can
3. Getting Feedback
Because you will be too close to your work to judge it objectively, you need readers
who can give you the feedback you need to make sure it’s is impeccable
* Build a community of discerning readers, online or off, with different kinds of abilities, who, collectively, can tell you what you need to know to improve your writing
* Responses may be contradictory, so you’ll have to sift through them, trusting your instincts and using what makes sense to you and forgetting about the rest
* Assume there are typos and other obvious mistakes. Find at least one persnickety reader to proofread your proposal or manuscript and your query letter.
Readers around the world want to read what you want to write. Why make them wait any longer than you have to? Get on with it and good luck!
