Sarah passed out copies of a handout with a timeline of her journey (CLICK THE LINK TO DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY) toward signing a contract with Carina Press. She’d attached a post-it note to each for a contest at the end. The person who guessed how many drafts it took her to reach her final manuscript would get a prize. (She gave the hint that it was between 5-15.)
Sarah started going through the events of her timeline. Below are some details she added verbally:
She writes in the Romance genre and decided to write her first novel as Sons of Anarchy fan fiction (based on elements of the TV show).
She started entering contests and getting feedback – Sarah read some of the comments she received (CLICK THE LINK TO DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY) many which were very critical of her main character, who is a hooker (like not seeing redeeming qualities soon enough, being unlikable, etc.)
When she hired the freelance editor, she paid $.007/word, which was about $400 and was money well-spent.
She queried eleven agents, did not even hear back from nine, and the two others were rejections, one not coming until eight months later.
Sarah handed envelopes to two group members with discussion questions that she asked them to read (separately):
The first asked whether she should self-publish or try to pursue a contract with a publisher – someone suggested doing both, but someone else brought up copyright issues; Sarah confirmed that many publishers don’t want to pick up self-published authors…
Sarah continued to discuss her timeline:
Her critique partner and she had both entered the Golden Heart Contest (the top Romance award for unpublished authors). She found out her critique partner had become a finalist just before she found out she had, too. (Someone later asked about the outcome, and her critique partner won the contest, with just a couple of points more; Sarah had received top points from all of the judges, except one, who’d only given her a score of 2.)
With this new status, she queried nine agents and editors. She received five requests for her manuscript, one within forty minutes (the other four gave no responses). Of those, she then had three rejections, and two acceptances, one agent and one editor.
She discussed the Twitter pitch contest, pointing out that it was difficult to do with so few character spaces; it took her a long time before she was happy with her submission. She then had everyone turn over the handout, where she’d created practice spaces for devising your own Twitter pitch, above the final lines she entered (CLICK THE LINK FOR THE HANDOUT). She pointed out the importance of saving room for crucial contact information, like the #RITAGH for her Golden Heart contest finalist status.
When she talked about receiving R&R from Jessica, Sarah passed around copies of her first two pitch letters for the group members to peruse and compare. (CLICK here for the ORIGINAL PITCH and here for the IMPROVED PITCH)
She then had the second of her discussion questions read, which was whether she should sign with an agent (and pay 15%), especially when she could sign directly with a publisher – points were immediately made about how signing with an agent is beneficial, and Sarah confirmed that her decision had been to sign with an agent, based on thinking of the future, not just on income from her first book, but looking ahead to a possible fifth, and so on, which paid off. (CLICK here for Sarah’s series outline)
Sarah passed around additional exhibits, including her Deal Memo (Press Offer sheet), which included a royalties schedule, her edit letter with change requests, Art Cover/Fact Sheet, etc., and gave some additional details, then answered questions:
Her agent renegotiated from 40% to 50% on some royalties
Her freelance editor, agent and publisher’s editor all asked for changes (which were all pretty much the same)
She had to add an additional 25,000 words
The publisher hated her working title, Breaking Her Rules, so they asked her for new ideas. She gave them 12, of which they chose none. The publisher then gave her choices, and they decided on Enforcer’s Price.
Her book releases will be February for the first, May for the second, and the third in September.
Her first two books took her about 100 hours each to write (equivalent to about 1½ months writing everyday). She works fulltime, and since her husband works at home, she goes to the library to write for two or three hours each day after work, and also spends about four hours each Saturday and Sunday there. She’s working on the third book now.
She stressed the need to polish and work hard on edits, as one sentence can turn off a reader (especially important to contest judges).
She usually does a good amount of preparation before her actual writing (e.g., outline, ideas of what she wants to write, To-Do lists from her last session), but it doesn’t always come out that way, and those don’t always happen; she sometimes plans in her mind while she does things like dry her hair.
She definitely uses mention of her contest awards in all queries, even putting it in all caps in an email subject line.
She reads a lot about how the publishing process works, what she needs to do, the language of her genre, expectations of a story arc, etc., and she checks Amazon and Good Reads for what’s ‘out there’ already.
Her goal was to publish a story that is “nice, but gritty, with a major publisher”. She got it!
She uses index cards with plot points, which she moves around and changes, sometimes adding new or throwing some out. She also made a very detailed outline – and threw it all out. She did that four times. It’s easier to write more than you need and take stuff out than to put new in later (she tends to underwrite).
She uses Scrivener writing software (which she bought for about $40 last year – may be more now) to keep track of her story arc, making checks and changes easier. It’s a nice visual, and allows for chapter divisions at the end.
In the Romance genre, A story is the emotional journey, B story is the subplot, and there’s sometimes a C story (she has all). It’s sometimes different in other genres.
She explained the difference between an anti-hero (one who starts out making bad choices in the story and changes to good) and a dark hero (one the reader sees making good choices, but finds out had made bad choices in the back story/history before the book began). Her main character was an anti-hero and she needed to change her to a dark hero through her editing.
Asked why she writes under a pseudonym, she said because her publisher made her! There was already a Sarah Hall doing well in her genre, and her maiden name was also already being used. She realized that when she writes Hall in cursive, it kind of looks like Haw, so that led her to Hawthorne.
Sarah then requested and started writing member questions to send to her agent:
Will Carina be moving more into non-romance? (since she’d mentioned earlier that her publisher, Carina Press, only works in romance, except for one dark-urban book that Sarah knows of)
Suggestions for poetry publishing?
Other than contests, what do you look for?
Additional questions just for Sarah came up as well, and she explained that working with professional editors really helped to improve her writing skills, and that writers can use ‘Publishers Weekly’ to find agents in specific genres.
She finished with the contest that she’d mentioned at the beginning, and Ria Russell won a gift bag (with a couple of books and the offer of Sarah’s critique of some of her writing) for the guess of eleven drafts.
Sarah also explained that she’d wait about a week before sending the group’s questions to her agent, so if anyone thinks of any other questions, they can email her (sarahx.r.hall@gmail.com) with them, and she’ll pass them on. (You should do that THIS WEEKEND if you’ve not already done it)
