Young Writers Society

Happy Saturday everyone!

I cant bring my laptop to the dorm because the guardians forbid it. Reason is simple : no recommendation letter from the community. But there is no Writers community nearby. Just Tapak Suci and another Soccer Club.

I can type my novel by typewriter now. And write it on my notebook. Another Problem is my dad said I must type it in ms word. 2 years and I only waiting my school allow me to type in pc. Is there any publisher who accept handwritten story? Or maybe is there any recommendation letter from writer association? I just try to establish my own writer club now

Nope, no publisher will accept a handwritten story. Typed, maybe, if they still accept mail. Most publishers and agents work in email, now.

But don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it at all.

Getting caught up in publishing and associations when you're only working on early drafts is putting the cart before the horse. It will likely take you that two years of being in school to write, revise, rewrite, revise, rewrite, get feedback, rewrite more, to get the story from an idea to something publishing worthy.

Work on getting a story out, first. A completed first draft. Then work on a completed second draft. And a third draft. It can easily take 5-10 drafts to get the story to where it needs to be for publishing. Then it can take the same amount of revisions polishing up a query letter.

Writing associations and your own club won't matter in the publishing world. They don't provide rec letters. In fact, it can turn agents off to hear "my writing club loved this book!" because it's not any credible metric. All agents/editors want is the story, formatted the way they want it to be formatted, sent the way they want it sent.

Publishing is a long game. So if you can't write with a computer for the next two years? Great! It means you have to focus on the story and your craft for those two years. Use them to their fullest to get at least one draft out, with revision time in there. If you're really committed, you could get two drafts out in that time frame. But neither of those drafts will be anywhere near publishing quality.

These two years will be nothing in your career. You're not missing out on anything. Just focus on your craft, and you'll be right on pace with other writers looking to publish who have computers.

Geez. I should wait? But thank you for the good response.

I tried to establish the writer club so my friends also can get typing permission and get good lesson how to write.

Hey, tristovee, I was interested with what you said there. Tapak Suci? Are you using Malay language as your first language, by any chance? If you do, me too! If not, sorry for the assumption. xD

Anyway! I think it's quite absurd that you can't bring your laptop in the dorm. First of all, I think school tasks nowadays do require the need of digital documents instead of the paper ones, although maybe it's different where you live at (I live in Malaysia. )

I'm pretty sure, without having read it, Rosey's given a sound advice, so if I repeat anything she says, I apologize in advance.

I think the most important thing to consider here is to make sure you're writing because it's fun. Everyone starts writing as a hobby after all, so one has to enjoy their hobby. After that, if you're writing a novel/stories, make sure you finish all of them first.

Then, if you want to get them published, that would be the time when you transfer everything you've done to your laptop. Although it's forbidden to have your laptop in your dorm, I'm pretty sure you can make some time to practice writing using it outside your dorm.

What I'm trying to say is, worry about the publishing opportunities later. You have to come up with quality, complete pieces, and you can achieve that using the old or modern device.

This is certainly the worst case scenario option, since it looks like typing is your favorite way to write, but you could always get your hands on a notebook and pen/pencil! I don't go to a boarding school, but I had a lot of free time during my freshman and sophomore years. My school doesn't allow laptops in class unless it's for classwork, and I didn't have anything to bring. Writing in a notebook in between classwork/during study halls helped me get more writing done. It's hard at first, but your fingers will eventually get used to it!

I should wait?

Yes.

The thing about writing is— it's a long process. Here's the list of steps, roughly, it takes to get a book out:

1- Write the book. With revisions. This can take a year or two (at least), because revisions also include beta reader feedback, so you need to account for time for others to read the story.

2- Research agents. Agents are the ones who actually sell your book for you, since most editors only accept works from agents. Find out what their wishlists are, what they represent, what their guidelines are, etc.

3- Write a query letter. Revise the query letter. Rewrite query letter. Repeat until you have a solid sales document.

4- Send query letter to agents who represent books in the genre you're trying to sell. Spreadsheets will probably be involved to keep track of it.

5- Wait. Collect rejections. Collect non-answers (you won't always get even a form rejection, and sometimes no reply in 6 months= never going to get a reply).

6- White you're waiting, write another book! Or two.

7- As you improve, revise what you're currently working on. Don't stop trying to tweak it to something better (yet).

8- Shelve story you had been submitting because you got no bites. Go back to step 1 with a new story. (This step is actually really, really likely to happen, especially with beginning authors. Some stories are unsellable. Hence "yet" in the previous step)

9- If you actually get critiques on your story from an agent (really rare, fyi), then do those revisions and take the time to properly incorporate them. Agents don't want to see you dashing off half-completed changes. Respect them and really think about how to incorporate their feedback.

10- If you're lucky, get signed! This is among one of the hardest steps to actually accomplish. It might take 3 books to get here.

11- Go through more revisions with the agent as the agent improves your book for the editing market.

12- Wait for the agent to sell your manuscript to editors. Write more books!

13- Get signed by a publishing house. This would be the other hardest step to actually accomplish.

14- MORE revisions and edits.

15- Wait for market release, which is completely out of your hands.

16- Congrats, you have a published book.

17- Repeat steps 1, possibly 8, then 11-16 for the next book. And if you break genres for the next book (ie- something your agent doesn't represent, because if you go from writing a fantasy to a horror novel then your fantasy agent won't have the horror connections needed, unless they actively sell fantasy and horror at the same time), repeat the whole process all over again. You'll have some help with your agent knowing people and being able to vouch for you, but you still have to sell yourself.

So if you can't stand the thought of waiting... this industry might not be for you. Because the process of selling a novel involves a lot of waiting. It can take years to get your first book sold, and the first book you sell might not be the first book you write. It probably won't be.

This is why I say: just focus on crafting a story. Because if you're doing this to get published and dread all of the steps outlined from 1 to 9, then consider why you write. Steps 1-9 are where you spend the bulk of your time in the early stages (many, many people on YWS have been in steps 1-9 for the past 5-8 years), so if you can't tolerate them, then take a good hard look at what you want and seek it elsewhere.

So be it. Thank you for all good answer!

BTW, I got my novel typed in my own blog. Finally it took 1.5 years to legalize my writing club with Internet and computers.

Since my boarding school is in remote land of Java, the Internet is so slow to upload my writings, especially for Light Novel with Manga illustrations.

Peace from Indonesia!