I have no business calling myself a writer.
I’m just a storyteller pretending to be one.
~I-am-Jules
Sometimes I sit in front of my computer for hours on end and simply fade into lala land. I wonder what the hell am I doing? I’m an unpublished author who is currently completing my ninth novel. Don’t ask me how many works in progress I have because it will show that I am truly schizophrenic.
I tell my closest friends that I am a storyteller. I’ve no business claiming the title of an author because when it comes to my writing abilities, I’m a hack, at best. Storytelling is a completely different beast, and one that I’m confident I do well. My imagination is my gift and I’ve learned early on that if I am going to pursue this journey of publishing my work, I must follow three simple rules.
- It can never be about the money. I will never rely on it to pay bills.
- It must always be about the story! (Most important of all)
- This process must always be fun. The minute I lose the joy of writing, its over.
Let’s start at the beginning.
I am staring at a
blank screen.
I never aspired to be a writer, but I always knew I had a deep imagination. My imagination is what got me through the hardest times in my life since I was a small child, creating an alternate universe that I could escape to when life got too hard.
I remember being five years old and sitting in front of the TV, the grainy screen two feet away from my face. I have the volume turned up high to cover my parents fighting in the kitchen about my dad’s drinking again. I’m enthralled with Denis Beilman lifting her leg above her head and spinning on one ice skate in a pretty blue dress. She won the world championship that night, and I remember thinking she was the prettiest woman I’d ever seen. From then on, I imagined being a famous ice skater whenever I needed to escape in my head. It became a necessary routine for a lonely child who rarely made friends. I did get the hang of socializing when I got older, but it was an aspect of life I was never comfortable with. In fact, I’m not sure I ever conquered that fear. I just turned into a badAss masker which admittedly has become my armor.
How did I get here?
The turning point was the moment I decided to sit in front of my computer at thirty-seven years old, and write it down. I daydreamed it a million times over well into my adolescence. Every single day, I would sink deep into my seat on the bus to listen to my mix tape on my Walkman (salute to my 80’s peeps) while hiding from bullies or trying to disappear from a troubled home. I had always relived the same story over and over but ironically, I never finished it. Over thirty years of evolution, and it took rock-bottom for something to urge me to revisit the story from the very beginning.
Divine intervention
With a second bottle of wine in front of me, I turned on my computer and started to write. It’s important to know there was no purpose in this journey except escape. I never in my life thought about writing a book. I had no idea of publishing or querying, and I most certainly didn’t plan on letting anyone read what I had written. I just had this story of Jules flowing from my fingertips and for the very first time in a very long time, I escaped from the hell in my head.
The moment the words appeared onto the screen, Jules was real. It was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. Next thing I knew, I had written almost four thousand words. I did the same thing the next night, and the next night. A month and a half later, my story was completed, and I wrote the end. The best part about the entire process was reading it back and loving it. But then it sat in my computer.
What do I do with it now?
I assumed you had to be a genius to write a book. I guess this will show how naïve I am to this business because whenever I thought of a writer, especially as an avid reader, I associated a writer with being a very smart person; someone with a college degree in English that had doctor in front of their name.
If you knew me, never in a million years would you look at Jules and think that she would want to write a book, or was even capable of it. Most people would ask if it was a joke and honestly, I can understand that mindset. I had no business writing a book. I hadn’t taken an English class in almost twenty years. If you looked at my first draft . . . Let’s just say it was comical. I wrote like a spoke. Some of it was in plain English with really bad grammar or in text lingo (I shit you not) and let’s not even get into my spelling errors.
Even after I read and re-read my story a billion times over, trying to make corrections despite my ignorance, I knew it was bad. I attempted to get a few people to read it, but no-one gave me any feedback. Even my best friend, who knows every dirty little secret in my life, couldn’t read it. She’s kind of a snob about some things, and grammar is a big pet peeve of hers. I was hoping her love for me would make her push through it to discover the story underneath all the mistakes, but no. She barely made it to the third chapter. For the record, it was really bad, and I don’t blame her one single bit. I tried a few other people….nothing. I would have given up if it wasn’t for the story.
I really loved the story.
I believed in it.
Maybe it was because it helped me out of a dark hole. I had an emotional attachment to it. Either way, I couldn’t let it go and wanted someone to read it. I needed someone to give it a chance so I started researching to find someone, a professional who could help me with this. I had one problem, though. I was a full-time adult student, working toward an Engineering Design degree, with a toddler and a new baby at home. I didn’t sleep, so I could find the time to write, but I was broke. With no money and no concept of how to find an ally in this project, I discovered a website that is a freelance marketplace.
Divine Intervention Again…
or Fate?
You know when you feel certain things happen for a reason? I truly feel the day I met this woman, my life changed for the better. I had been receiving obscene quotes of thousands of dollars for someone to read my book. I was beginning to think this book wasn’t meant to be, until out of the blue, I got a message from a woman who is also a struggling author and proofreader for two small publishers in New York City. I remember telling her my situation. I had this book that had never been edited. I was embarrassed by my writing skills because I sucked at English. She never judged me, not my financial situation, not my writing ability, not the fact that I was attempting to be a writer with absolutely no knowledge of what it took to make it happen. Her support showed through from the very first message back to me.
“I was in your exact position about three years ago. I wrote my first book when my youngest son was born. I have learned so much since then.”
This was when I found my writing angel. The single most important person in my life as a writer. Not only did she edit my atrocity that consisted of a whopping 110,000 words, she did it for two hundred dollars. She helped me get started and more importantly, she saw the story underneath my poor writing, and she loved it!!!
“It’s done!! I loved it!! You tied up everything very, very nicely. I love the plot, characters, pacing, action scenes. It’s a great story, and I think, with work, it could be published. “
“Good luck with it!! When and if you are ready to send it to agents or publishers, give me a shout and I’ll help you get started…..”
Publish it. Wait…. What?
The daydream evolved into a full blown obsession. When I closed my eyes, I saw my book and every time I went to the bookstore, I imagined my books on the shelf. I started to design out my book cover in my head and how it would look inside. I wanted to build a badass website that would turn heads and win awards. I could do this. I’m a designer. I’m creative. I am motivated and I have more stories in my head. I can do this.
Try and stop me.
So you know when you were a little kid and you learned to do something really cool for the first time like a back flip or a wheely in your bike. You do it again and again, and by the end of the day, you think you got it down packed. The kid in you is like holy cow! I’m totally going to show this off in front of my friends. You go into it with an ego, thinking your shit does not stink and then you wipe out…
H-A-R-D.
That story is the metaphor for my first attempt at finding an agent to help me publish the first story I ever wrote.
Crash and Burn? Oh yah but…
I rolled it down a mountain first.
Here is how it went in a nutshell. My rude awakening was like hitting a brick wall without a helmet. It hurt.
I joined querytracker and started searching for an agent. Over a couple of months I sent out over fifty query letters to big and small time agents. Guess what my responses were?
NO- No thank you.
- Not for me sorry.
- NO
- NO
- Don’t give up but NO.
- It has potential but N-O.
- No
- No
You get the drift. What a devastating feeling. Rejection after rejection followed. I think my record was seven rejection letters in one day. I was starting to lose my momentum, that great feeling of ‘The Hidden Jules’ being completed and proud of it was slipping at a record speed.
I am going to be honest, I cried a lot.
Most of the rejections where either downright mean or photocopied. Every rejection that came became a harder pill to swallow. It got to the point I hated checking my emails. The minute I saw an email reply from an agent, I would get a stomach ache as I opened it, preparing myself for the rejection that would be in plane sight. My eyes would zone in on the words that were the bane of my existence: No Thank you and Good Luck. Before I would even read the letter, no matter how big or small the amount of words written, those words stuck out like a flashing light.
I had no business being a writer.
WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING???
Remember when I said things sometimes happen for a reason? I am going to tell you why I didn’t quit. It was because of the very first Query letter I sent out. I spent over a week coming up with a list of agents to send letters to. I am one of those people that always aim big. So I Googled the top agents for my genre and picked the number one. Her name is Jill and she had signed over 30 book deals the previous year. The letter I sent her was very personal and not traditional by any means.
Hello Miss. %#@#%l
I have to express something to you even though I know this will make my query letter a little longer then is should be. You are my very first query and although my second query letter will be very traditional to industry, this one will come from me. Jules. I have a lot of anxiety running through me which is a combination of fear and excitement. I spent hours online researching agents because I felt like the first letter is the hardest to send out. This is the one I will remember and this letter I will keep no matter the outcome. I picked you because your bio sparked my interest. I could be that diamond in the rough so why not start at the top.
This book came out of me when I needed it most and the few people who have read it, have pushed me to jump out of my normal routine and pursue having it published. My life has been very tumultuous over the past year. I won’t bore you with the details but what I will share with you is I have found out who the true woman in me is. I am humbled by my strength of survival. I am happy with the woman I have become. My imagination and my i-pod are my biggest weapon against the negativity that sometimes can be overwhelming. This is when I developed the story of Jules.
What if you could do anything? Would you dive off a cliff or jump out of a plane? Maybe you would become astronaut or jet fighter. If I could do anything, it would be something extreme like jumping across 20 cars while doing 20 flips on a motorbike going 100 miles an hour. It’s amazing what people can do with their bodies. The abilities and talent we see in Extreme Sports automatically makes you hot because that is a dangerous but impressive skill. This is the part of me that developed Jules who is the main character of ‘The Hidden Jules’, a romantic novel set in the world of extreme sports of almost 99,000 words.
For Jules, it started out as a profession as a failed Olympian known as Juliana. Juliana drops off the face of the earth and comes back as Jules to go back to school and redefine her life. Then she discovers the land of concrete in-line skating and the world of extreme sports. Her gift of balance leads her on a path that feels right to her as long as she can do it in the privacy of her own arena at night. It’s her therapy. Jules gets her Engineering Degree and meets the man of her dreams. She pops out a couple of awesome kids and works toward the American dream. That dream is cut short when her husband dies suddenly.
Devastated, Jules throws everything she has into her local skate park. With the help of her family and three childhood friends; a famous BMX star, a rock-star, and her soul sister, she learns to live again. Her mentor, big George, sells the place to Jules and together they build it into a mega state-of-the-art facility where she prepares to launch her new ramp idea to the world. Of course she won’t do it the easy way. She refuses to pay into the corporate trend of energy drinks, M-TV, and media frenzies. She is going to need help because the place is barely staying afloat and the money is running out. Then the hot skater-boy lawyer walks in.
This story is about a girl whose only path in life she chose to follow was her own despite what society and her mother expected of her. After hitting rock bottom, she is able to pick herself back up to develop not only the biggest and best indoor skate arenas in the world, but also a brilliant ramp design that will change how people look at indoor Extreme Sports. She and Taylor battle an enemy from the past who try to tear Dreamfield apart piece by piece. Jules is forced back into the spotlight that she has ran from since she was a teenager. She has to, in order to save her life’s work and the respect of the people around her who matter most; The Dreamfield family.
This is the first story of many. I am currently working on the second chapter of this story because I just can’t help myself, it’s exhilarating! I hope I have sparked an interest and look forward to speaking with you. I have attached the first five chapters for your review.
Best Regards,
Juliana Ellsworth-Howe
Right? I know what your thinking.
That is long as hell and most agents probably wouldn’t have even finished the first paragraph, sending an automatic denial in 2.5 seconds. Especially considering I am told most agents have a process when reviewing query letters. First they Google your name. If you have no platform set, it’s an automatic denial.
Platform? What the hell is that? I had no idea what Twitter was, for god sakes, so I am pretty sure the lack of platform (as in zero) caused most of them to pass after reading my name. At the time, I had no idea what the hell a platform was. (Staging? My husband is a musician so that’s what came to mind.)
Not only did she read my letter at ten o’clock at night but she also read the five chapters I sent her. Within twelve hours, I got a response.
Dear Juliana:
Thanks for sending a portion of your manuscript. You write very well and have a strong voice in this, and your character is immediately likeable and interesting, and your pages move quickly. You have an excellent start with this project.
However, I felt like it was a little jumpy between the scenes/chapters in these opening pages — going past, then 11 years later, then a few more years, then present all within a few chapters, and in my opinion, editors will want more of a continuous backstory. I would suggest opening with the prologue and then jumping to the present day and working in the other parts as backstory rather than having all of the quick jumps in the beginning.
You are a talented writer and may want to try connecting with a local writer’s group or critique partners to help you take this to the next level because your writing clearly demonstrates a strong talent! Good luck with your work.
Best,
Jill
I received this letter a little over six years ago and this woman will never know what this letter did for me. It gave me hope that maybe….just maybe I was good enough.
My story is worth it.
SO with the help of my writing angel, we re-edited the book following Jill’s suggestions along with cutting out almost ten thousand words (Info dumps and backstory — another lesson learned).
I also continued on the search for someone to publish or help me publish the story of Jules. When I exhausted all agents (I probably could have kept going but I got denied by my writing angel’s agent which was the last straw for me), my writing angel suggested a different direction. We decided to go directly to the publishers.
This was a entirely new lesson for me. It opened my eyes to the ugly side of publishing on a grand scale. Worst case scenario is, I lose total control of my book. What? They could change the name?
Hell NO! Not only could they change the name but they could adjust the content how they saw fit. They could pick the cover without my input. As an artist, that one was the hardest pill to swallow and would be a huge compromise on my part. My cover ideas come to me when I’m writing my stories.
My first taste of that was when my writing angel and I edited the book so heavily, I found that I was losing the story for the sake of the romance and I just couldn’t live that. The story was about a strong independent woman who overcame tragedy to succeed in life. The romance was a big part of the story but not ‘THE’ story. The final product could almost be downright unrecognizable.
I will have to make a choice. Don’t ask me what my answer is because I probably won’t know until the contract is thrown down in front of me. I have no idea but I do want to point out so people don’t think I’m one of those who believe she can write a best selling book right out of the gate. I know I have a lot to learn.
A lot. A word that doesn’t sound big enough to encompass the amount of learning I need to write a worthy book, a book that people will spend their precious time to reading.
That, in itself is a huge complement. If you read it and finish it? Score! No matter how bad you thought it was, you still felt the need to finish it. But the best would be that when you put the book down, you feel a brief sense of loss that it’s over. To get to that point you must listen to people.
If you can’t take constructive criticism, you will never grow in anything you do so I welcome it. As a designer, it is a trait that has evolved over time and made me a great leader in my trade. I can learn from my garbage man. In my experience, the garbage man and the janitor probably know more then anyone and that is no joke.
What I am talking about is the freedom to choose. I want the ultimate choice of how my story will evolve. I have a vision and I want my story to follow that vision because once again, it must be about the story and not about the money. I am a creative soul in everything I do. I never follow the path most traveled, but tend to make my own path almost every time.
I want my books to be my vision. ~Jules
One more shout out to my writing angel who is my biggest influence. She has a very busy life and is truly Wonder Woman. How she fits all of it into her busy life, I have no idea, but she always takes the time to send me information on what publishers and agents were looking for. She fit an edit in for my book to submit within a publishers time frame even though she was drowning in her own life. My story was her story and THAT, my friends, that one act of kindness is a beautiful thing.
On the flip side, Watching her progress has become a motivating factor in what paths I have chosen. I support her any way I can and most importantly, I enjoy doing it because she is on Fir-ea-a! Please check her out cozy mysteries.
www.lenaGregory.com
To wrap this all up into a nice big package, If I could give a struggling author who is just starting out any advice, it would be this.
Find people. They are out there.
Take the time to find them because one thing I have learned is Authors want to help each other. You will find people to connect with and don’t be afraid of the people who shoot you down. There is always someone else who will give you positive reinforcements of some sort. I was so lucky. I literally found a diamond in a enormous haystack.
I am learning the ropes of the trade of networking. I have found street teams to connect with in the writing world and learned from their journeys and successes. I also have a platform now, although tiny tiny, it’s developing. I am proud of everything I have achieved and am excited to see where this take me. Baby steps has been my motto in life for a while now so I am in no rush. It will happen when it’s supposed to.
repeat…”I got this”…repeat
~Jules
Note to self: Lose the fear, Jules. You got this.