Dec. 18, 2002
The one comment that has come up from publishers and agents is the lack of direction my book has. That if it was developed more, they could do something with it. I think that I was hoping they’d figure out what to do and I could just write it.
That’s not how it’s going to happen.
Although I’ve become closer to what my book is about, I wasn’t quite there with the last proposal – the ending was still unclear to me. After all, if the book is mimicking real life, how does it just end?
I knew the book had to be slightly different from the web site, but again, I wasn’t sure how. I’ve been brainstorming randomly but with the push of the past two days, I’ve been brainstorming like mad and finally figured it out thanks to some creativity and following the rules.
I kept thinking I didn’t need to do a chapter outline like every ‘hot to get published book’ states since my book doesn’t have chapters. I thought that way until I did one and realised if I had only followed these guidelines months before, perhaps I’d have something out there now.
Making the chapter outline I realised my book has several parts – an introduction, a beginning, a middle, an end, a resource section and a FAQ section. I put points underneath them all as to what would go where and the strange thing is, the way I have written it, it all falls into this.
I also created a page to show what’s new in the proposal and book. I’ve been doing my market research making graphs and all that good fancy marketing. Doing that has really helped me to understand my book and who wants what. It’s also helped me stand firm on what I want.
There’s the old saying that to break the rules, you have to understand them. After rereading several of my publishing books I now understand which rules I can – and can’t – break.
The vision is getting clearer.