Year of Win, Day 29: Patience Pays Off

Greetings!

It's been a long week, but the weekend is here! I hope you are looking forward to it as much as I am!

Before we get to our very inspirational Year of Win story, I need to make a quick ROW80 check-in since I was bad and missed my check in last week.  *Hides head in shame* I'm behind.  In the last two weeks, I've churned out maybe 2500 words....when I should have written 7000.  I'm bouncing between 2 projects, and it took me a bit to settle.  I have now, and have spent a few days in researching and outlining. This weekend, I write. Period.

Now on to the bestest story I've heard in a while : D I met my dear friend, Liz Coley, on the OWW site nearly three years ago. I was a newbie "serious" writer, and she was the agented writer who took me under her wing. Liz went through my first, quite awful, novel. Chapter by chapter, she taught me a lot, both through her own writing (which I critiqued...sort of, since I had no idea what I was doing), and through her critiques of my work. She's read several other manuscripts for me since, and each one is better for it.  So it thrills me to present her story. Recently, Liz sold a manuscript, in a good deal, to a major house. Getting to this point took perseverance, hard work and patience. These are the kinds of stories that give me hope, and I hope you find it as exciting as I did!

How Long?


Like the psalmist David lamenting his grief and fear, we writers spend some dark nights of the soul calling, "How long, oh Lord, how long?" For many, the answer is ten. Ten? Really? Yes, that's what I've heard--ten manuscripts, ten years, ten thousand hours--pick one. Learning to be a writer takes a long time, and becoming a published author can take even longer. But...this is the Year of Win.

2011 is the year I self-published my fourth novel, Out of Xibalba


2011 is the year I sold my seventh novel to big publishing


In the same week.

Follow the breadcrumbs backwards to see how I got here. Back in 1998, when my boys were four and six, I made the sudden decision that I wanted to be an author. Connie Willis was 48 when she broke out with the absolutely brilliant Doomsday book. I was only 36. I had time. I signed up for my first speculative fiction conference, wrote two short stories to take with me, got my first positive feedback, and found out I was expecting my daughter. In 2001, when she started school, I decided to tackle my first novel, The Captain's Kid, the kind of story I wished I could find for my boys. It took two years to write and taught me a lot about the craft--about writing, revising, polishing, and finishing. And when I started submitting, The Captain's Kid also taught me a lot about the business. You've been through this yourselves, most likely. A lot of silence, one maybe, and ultimately no. My second manuscript, Splitting Point, sent to 12 agents and editors, got as far as one encouraging personal rejection. Under its earlier title of Sixty Million Best Friends, my third novel Tor Maddox: Unleashed went out to 42 agents. It worked. I was learning. In 2007, I signed for representation with Nancy Coffey Literary. I thought I'd reached the top of the mountain, but it was really Basecamp 2, the next staging spot.


At least I could see the path up. Each year I was attending my speculative fiction workshop/conference and one or two children's literature conferences. I was churning out another novel every November with Nanowrimo. I was making friends and connections in the writing community. I had critique partners and the SFF Online Writing Workshop. I was writing and submitting short stories. In short, I was doing everything my teachers had advised--if you want to be a professional author, act like one. You'll get there.


2011 is also the year I finally sold those first two short stories written back in 1998.

"Never give up. Never surrender."

Liz Coley is the author of Out of Xibalba, available now on Amazon, Kindle, B&N, Nook, Createspace, and Smashwords.

Congrats to Liz for her success! I'm super-excited to see what happens next!