You Can Show Them Better Than You Can Tell Them

Welcome to Five On Fridays, my weekly straight-no-chaser newsletter where I help demystify the publishing industry for new writers and early-career authors. Let’s jump right in.  

This week, I’m abandoning my five-step format and getting a little more personal about my publishing journey. I’ll start by admitting that I am a tad bit behind on my posting schedule. But the delay was for a good reason. Beyond the usual busyness of work and family life, a couple of weeks ago, I took a short trip to meet my literary agent, Rockelle, in person for the first time. I had a great time meeting her, and a few of the other authors she represents, and I left our meeting feeling energized and renewed.

Not many people know I’m agented, and that’s not by accident. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years in publishing, it’s that success in this industry is more like a stackable series of events that build on each other than one single defining event. Being agented is a pretty big “first” event on this journey, especially when you’re fortunate enough to have snagged an agent as awesome as mine (more on that in a later post), but it’s the big first event of a hundred bigger events, and my modus operandi is to save the huge announcements for when I have something big big BIG to reveal. As Rockelle is always saying, “I can show you better than I can tell you.” I tend to keep things close to the vest, but today I wanted to pull back the veil a little, and let you in on something pretty cool that happened to me on my publishing journey.

“Eriq La Salle wants to talk to you about your manuscript”

In an industry defined as much by its rejections as by its acceptances, having someone who knows how to write—who’s spent their career writing novels, reading stories and screenplays, and directing and producing TV shows—tell you you write well, is one of those events I mentioned earlier. It’s a big deal. And it happened to me.

If you’re a GenXer like me and you watched TV as much as I did, your introduction to Eriq La Salle was probably through his character Dr. Peter Benton on the NBC medical drama ER. In addition to being an actor, Eriq’s a prolific TV director and producer, but he’s also the author of the Martyr Maker thriller series. And, guess what, y’all? We have the same literary agent. So when Rockelle called me one day and told me Eriq really liked a manuscript I’d shared and wanted to talk to me about it, I casually said, “Sure,” ended the call, and then I. Freaked. TF. Out.

Okay, so let me back up a little.

The story was the YA murder mystery I’d benched after receiving several agent requests for fulls and a handful of requests to “revise and resubmit.” Around the same time, I entered my thriller-reading era, devouring several novels a month. No doubt influenced by this, I decided that I wanted to make the manuscript less of a mystery and more of a thriller. But I could never quite find the time to revise the story.

And then I met Rockelle, and then Rockelle read the manuscript and offered me representation. And then she told me Eriq La Salle wanted to talk to me. So, armed with an open Google Doc, pen and paper, and a stiff drink (just kidding … or am I?), I logged on to a one-hour Zoom call with Eriq and our agent.

Three hours later, I had pages of notes and suggestions for upping the story’s pace and thriller elements. Eriq was gracious with his time and enthusiastic about my manuscript and about my ability to incorporate his suggestions if I agreed with them.

I did agree with them, and so did Rockelle. And despite the initial panic I often experience after receiving feedback (you know the feeling; it’s the “there’s no way in hell I can do this” pit in your stomach), I did it. Over the course of several months, I incorporated Rockelle’s, Eriq’s, and my critique partner’s feedback, and the end result is, hands down, the best thing I’ve ever written.

Submission & Validation

We’re still on submission with the manuscript. There’s been the usual silence that happens on submission, a few Can’t wait to reads, and a couple of rejections that felt more like confirmation that I was on the right track than anything else. (One editor called me a “phenomenal writer.”)

Due to the political nature of the manuscript, written years ago as a dystopian but now frighteningly close to real life, I have no idea how long my submission period will be. And, political climate aside, publishing is incredibly subjective; one person’s slow pace is another’s slow burn. The process can be exhausting, and if we only seek validation from outside ourselves, we are destined to burn out quickly on our stories and on the industry. But the value of receiving validation from your peers, other writers in the trenches with you, cannot be overstated. Rockelle and Eriq’s belief in my story buoys me. It flips any rejection I receive on its head, turning it into the publisher’s loss, not mine.

I don’t know what shape my big, big event will take, and I don’t know when it will happen. What I do know is that I’ll keep writing and keep subbing. I’ll keep working on new projects with my agent and critique partners to get the stories submission ready. What I won’t do is spend too much time talking about the big events before they happen. But, I believe in that story, and because I can show you better than I can tell you, here’s a sneak peek at the trailer I created for my YA action thriller, The Code, currently out on submission.

That wraps up this week’s Five On Fridays. Thank you for subscribing and reading. If you found this newsletter helpful, please share it on social media and forward it to your writer friends. Happy writing!

-Grace