Hello, dreamers. It’s done: as of this evening, I’ve sent my tenth and final query of this round. I’ve reached the end of the week, and no rapid rejections, so more than likely I’m on the right track. Now the waiting begins.

As I mentioned in the last round, waiting for query responses usually takes a while. As with short fiction submissions, in the first week or two no news is typically good news; rapid rejections indicate your query is throwing up red flags with agents, which could mean a fatal flaw in your query package. While there’s always a chance your query could wow an agent to the point where they’ll send a full request immediately, usually you can expect to wait at least four weeks for a response. Typically up to eight weeks. And some agents will simply never respond if they’re unimpressed.

It’s important to remember, however, that just by sending out queries you’ve come a long way. This process is itself the culmination of at least months, more often years of hard work. Most writers toil in obscurity for a long time before finally catching their big break. In the literary industry, this largely thankless process is known as the “Invisible Work”.

The “Invisible Work”

Not to belabor the point, but in case I haven’t mentioned it enough, becoming a published author is a long and grueling process. The number of authors who go straight from “I’ll bet I could write a novel” to published author is small enough to be inconsequential. So if you want to become a published author, you have to be prepared to put in a lot of thankless work.

Think for a moment about your favorite contemporary author. Probably a big name, right? Somebody like Stephen King, or George R. R. Martin, or Andy Weir. Each of those authors is now a household name, but I guarantee they rode to stardom on a veritable tidal wave of rejection. Stephen King was working as an English teacher when he learned his debut novel (Carrie) would be published. Andy Weir originally published The Martian as a free serial on his personal website, after striking out while querying his first novel, Theft of Pride. No matter how good an author is, it all began with “no” after “no” after “no”.

I’ve found the key to rapidly advancing as a beginning author is to accept that you don’t know much about writing. Even if you know the basics, I guarantee you know even less than you think you do. Trust me; I speak from experience. I began writing in 2013, when I wrote my first several short stories and began my first novel. Between career demands and (mostly positive) life changes, it took the better part of three years to complete that initial novel. It took almost another year to write a novel that actually had potential in the literary market.

I got discouraged more than a few times along the way. When you’re writing constantly and receiving only rejections and a handful of blog views each time, it’s easy to feel as though you’re shouting into the void. Doomed to toil in obscurity forever. Between work, my relationship, and children, I allowed my writing to languish more than once. Unfortunately, whenever life forced me to choose what to focus my energy on, it was an easy choice: I loved writing, but it offered no tangible benefits.

But I kept at it, and over the course of the past three years, I finally turned a corner. The stars aligned elsewhere in my life, allowing me to finally throw myself fully into writing, and get serious. And that made all the difference. Fast-forward to today, and I’m a published author with multiple short pieces appearing in print this year, and an excellent novel to query. I’m ready to take the next step.

My experience with my “Invisible Work” has taught me a thing or two. I would say the same thing about being an aspiring writer that Dr. Carl Sagan said about astronomy: it’s a humbling, character-building profession. And over time, I’ve learned there are several keys to success:

Write

Look, it may seem obvious, but the first and most important step in becoming a successful writer is to write. Or, more precisely, keep writing. No matter how many rejections you compile, keep writing new works. Don’t get hung up on a piece you really liked that got no’s across the board. I often say that writing is a constant cycle of thinking “I’ll never write something this good again”, then thinking “How did I ever think this was the best I could do?”

It is vitally important to keep moving forward, to keep growing and progressing as a writer. And the only surefire way to do that is to keep producing more work. Maybe you really like that last piece you wrote, the one everyone rejected. So hold onto it, but keep writing new stuff. Maybe, somewhere down the line, people will want to publish that great piece once your name is on everyone’s lips. Or, maybe, you’ll look back at it a month or a year from now and realize it wasn’t as good as what you’ve done since then.

Read

You hear it a lot, but reading is crucial for a writer. In the early going, it helps you to learn more about literary conventions (which you probably need help with unless you have an MFA, whether you realize it or not). But it can be easy to start thinking “Oh, I’ve learned all I can from this”. No, you haven’t. Because the literary market is always changing.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve thrown myself back into reading. But I’ve done so strategically. I read science fiction almost exclusively. To be fair, I used to read mostly sci-fi, for the same reason I write it: it’s my favorite genre. But I now read only sci-fi because I’m studying my sector of the literary industry. I often refer to my fiction reading as “market research”, because it helps me to both learn what is or isn’t currently fashionable in the literary market and understand my place in it. And that brings me to the next key:

Associate with your peers

…and be able to recognize them. If you’re hoping to become a published author, you must never lose sight of that goal. It’s never too early to think of where, exactly, you fit into the modern literary landscape. And while it’s always good practice to lend a hand and help out writers who aren’t as far along as you are, there’s value in associating mainly with your peers within the writing community.

Whatever stage you’re in, rest assured there are plenty of other writers out there in the same boat with you. Surrounding yourself with your peers can keep you motivated, and keep you moving forward. It can feel sad when you find yourself gravitating toward a new group of writers, leaving some of those you’ve come to know and care about behind. But I try to think of it as graduating. Sooner or later, you move on. You may lose touch with some of your old friends at school, but you’ll make new ones wherever you go next.

Track Your Progress

Part of the key to the point above is keeping track of your growth as a writer. I find it helpful to keep at least some of my older work around. I look back at it periodically, and note where my writing style has changed. In all aspects of life, it’s always good to remember where you’ve been.

Grow

As a writer, you must always be moving forward. Any success, major or minor, is merely a stepping stone. There must always be an after. Over the past several months, I’ve actually found myself annoyed at times by my obligations to Writers of the Future. To the upcoming anthology, the awards ceremony in April. It’s not because I don’t think it’s a big deal. It is. Writers of the Future is the paramount global speculative short fic contest, and winning is a huge honor. Rather, it’s because, to me, it’s something that already happened. The night I learned I’d won first place, I sat down and wrote a new short story. I won, I celebrated, then I got back to work.

It’s important to constantly push the envelope. To expand your boundaries and capabilities. You should always be trying new things. Short fiction in particular is a great way to test new techniques in writing. I like to think of it as my “test kitchen”. Since I know I’ll only spend at most a week on a project, I feel free to take risks.

Don’t get discouraged

And this, right here, is the big one. It’s well known that the biggest difference between writers who succeed and those that fail is the successful ones never gave up. When Andy Weir struck out with his first novel, he kept writing new stories. At one point Stephen King believed he’d end up teaching English forever, but he didn’t stop producing new material. In the end, their determination paid off. It may have taken a while, but they made it.

I know better than anyone how hard it can be to shake the feeling that you’re doomed to toil in obscurity forever. Becoming a successful writer takes years of hard work for little or now reward. You’ll get a lot of rejections. You’ll hear a lot of crickets. And through it all, you’ll write a lot of stories you really love, which no one will ever see. At least not for a long time.

But the “Invisible Work”, hard as it may be, is crucial. And in the end, it’s worth it. Even in the early days, you’ll find at least a few readers who believe in your work. Never forget them: the wonderful people who believed in you, when it was hard even to believe in yourself. – MK