How To Get Published
A personal journey in fifteen steps
By Nanda Reddy
Step 1: Realize you are a writer. Don’t say it out loud. Barely whisper it to yourself. But realize this as you ride your bike to organic chemistry, a class you’re dreading. You’d rather ride up and down that tree-lined street and study morning light on leaves, those million shades of green. You’d rather hunt for words to capture that already disappearing feeling of the world being all possibility. Realize with alarm that you’ve always done this, this stopping and staring and trying to trap impossible moments onto scraps of paper, and that it might mean you really want to be… a writer? Shake it away because people like you whose working class parents have never read a novel in their lives aren’t meant to be writers. Kids like you are meant to use your scholarships to get good jobs that guarantee salaries, to escape blue collars. Besides, you were never cool like those artistes in high school. You’re no artiste. But uncool as you are, you know: you will write because you can’t help it.
Step 2: Become a teacher because you’re guaranteed a paycheck, you can make a difference, and a six-week summer is certainly long enough to write the novel that’s sprung into your head.
Step 3: Teach and write your sh*tty first draft secretly believing you’ll be the first ever to not write a sh*tty first draft. Spend embarrassing amounts of time imagining conversations on Oprah’s couch.
Step 4: Read your work and know you’ve penned the sh*ttiest first draft ever. Pat yourself on the back for having the foresight to get a real job and for keeping your stupid dreams a secret. Lose that sh*tty draft when your un-backed-up computer gets a virus. Cry, but believe the universe is telling you something.
Step 5: Defer the dream, throw yourself into teaching, and enjoy it. Decide, if you can’t do, teach. Succeed well enough to coauthor a book for teachers on how to teach kids to write. Pitch and sell it to a publisher on your first try! There — you’re published, and wasn’t that easy?
Step 6: Memorize On Writing and Bird by Bird and begin rewriting your lost story one bird at a time. Without adverbs. You’ve grown — you feel it — and publishing, you’ve discovered, is a breeze. Join a critique group, get and give feedback, and feel the wind at your back. Consider applying to MFAs but fear you, who doesn’t even have an English degree, would get rejected. [Regret not applying, always.] Buy and study every craft book you find.
Step 7: Marry, start a family, and feel fortunate that your husband’s 6am-8pm job affords you the luxury of staying home with the kids. Plan to finish your novel during nap time á la JKRowling. Fail at being JKRowling. Discover raising kids is a 12am-12am job and that nap time is for making dinner and cleaning up after the tornados that constantly wreck your house. Realize your husband’s long hours transformed you into a single parent. The wind at your back becomes a gale at your chest. Write in dribs and drabs, constantly dropping the thread and hunting for it.
Step 8: Procrastinate, fear failure, and age. Volunteer your time away at the kids’ school unable to say no, people pleaser that you are. Slooowly finish that first novel (again) without fanfare, aware it still needs work but feeling a little sick of it. Write a query letter, send out five, hear nothing back, and take this as resounding FU from the universe. Know you should edit, but start on a shiny new idea.
Step 9. Read widely, promiscuously, with the appetite of your twelve-year-old bookworm self. Discover audiobooks and earbuds. Read as you shuttle kids about and watch their ball games. Read as you cook, exercise, and do laundry. Read beyond the bookclub’s monthly pick. Read more than you write. Read with a critic’s eye, noting that perfection is impossible. Begin letting go of the idea of perfection. A little.
Step 10: Face your mortality when a pandemic hits. You might very well die without ever having penned a particular novel that’s been rattling around in your head, the one you know you were meant to write. Appreciate the windfall of time you’ve been suddenly granted. Your kids (blessedly independent) are learning remotely, activities have paused, volunteer work has ended, and the gym (your other major distraction) has closed. You can finally sit and write for longer than ten minutes!
Step 11: Face the ominous blank page and realize you have developed ADD. Out of practice, you can’t sit your butt in a chair longer than ten minutes! Sign up for an expensive WD online novel writing workshop with 10K word deadlines. Not wanting to waste so much money and ever that people pleaser, force yourself to meet the deadlines. Words drip, trickle, pour, then gush. Soon you must pry yourself out of the chair to make dinner and interact with your family. In this way, you draft the novel you feared you weren’t skilled enough to write. And you realize all that reading and earlier writing wasn’t for naught.
Step 12: After writing “the end,” realize you’ve been living under a rock, out of touch with the writing world. Discover online communities: Scribophile and Critique Match. Give and get feedback, sharpening your editorial eye. Connect with strangers willing to beta swap novels, most outside your genre. Get indiscriminate, painful feedback — learn you’ve bored, offended, and annoyed readers with characters who would not do that.
Step 13: Nurse hard feelings, toss scenes, and rehaul. With your tail between your legs, stare each critique in the eye. Realize that, yes, that whole part is boring; that character wouldn’t do that; and that plot point is racist (implicit bias is real!). Cut, rewrite and tighten. Swap work with more beta readers. Get hard feedback, thicken your skin, and repeat. Know you’re ready to query when you get consistent positive feedback from strangers who owe you nothing.
Step 14: Pivot towards publication. Watch every youTube video on querying, then dive into the slush pile. Join QueryTracker and Publisher’s Marketplace, research wish lists, and pore over agent websites. Compile a good-fit batch and write personalized query letters. Send out, and ride the rollercoaster of joy and sorrow as rejections and requests roll in. Read too deeply into small signs as you wait for agents to read, as you get RnRs, as you rewrite, as you query a second batch, as you get more requests, and as you finally get an OFFER!
Step 15: Learn that getting an agent is a mini hurdle compared to selling a book to a publisher. After two rounds of edits with your agent, go on sub dreaming of auction bells. Feel bummed when rejections roll in, editors saying, “Great, couldn’t put it down, but not for me.” Pat yourself on the back for getting this far and tell yourself you’ll be okay even if you don’t sell the thing. Then get an offer from a house that LOVES your work. Fall in love with the house and accept their preempt. And get ready to pivot to marketing.
My novel, A Girl Within A Girl Within A Girl, is forthcoming from Zibby Books (Zibby Owens), likely 2025 when I turn 50. Before selling it, I inhaled stories like these. I’m barely on the other side, so I worry about jinxing things. But time isn’t guaranteed, and if you’re anything like me, you’re always hunting for paths that mirror yours. I hope this journey will inspire a writer out there (perhaps even a former teacher?!?) who deferred her dreams, too. Write on!
Each step can probably be expanded into a longer essay; expect those shortly!
