Unsolicited manuscript submissions to publishing companies end up in what the industry calls “the slush pile.”  Stacks of slush may languish for months, waiting for some editor or assistant to take a look.  Your goal, as a novelist, is to make your manuscript be the one in that towering pile that sparkles, demands a careful and enthusiastic read, and ultimately gets published.

When I teach writing, the most common question I get is about that very process.  How can I get my book published?  There is no magic answer, of course.  But here are what I consider the five basic steps:

1.  Learn your craft.

Seems obvious, right?  But many people seem to assume that if they write one draft of one story, the next step is to start looking for a publisher.  It doesn’t help that so many beginning writers hear horror stories from practicing writers about how long it took them to find a publisher.  Those tales make beginners anxious to get in the game and start sending their own work out.  That phenomenon floods editors’ desks with submissions, most of which are not ready to be read, therefore slowing down the process even more.  It’s a downward spiral that hurts everyone.

So:  take the time to learn how to tell your story and make it the best it can be.  Enroll in a writing course.  Join a critique group—a good one, with people you can learn and grow with.  Be willing to revise… and revise… and revise some more.  Don’t send a manuscript out before it’s ready.  Focus first on writing your novel, not on selling your novel.

2.  Be professionally active.

My writing students cringe when I tell them I wrote my first novel twenty years before I sold a novel.  But for most of those twenty years, I wrote in isolation.  I wrote a lot.  I gained some confidence.  I knew I could start and finish a novel.  But I didn’t get published because I wasn’t growing as a writer, wasn’t getting feedback on my work, wasn’t making the right connections within the industry.

So:  Join whatever writers’ group is appropriate for the type of writing you do.  (I’m a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrations, Women Writing the West, Mystery Writers of America, and several others.)  Save your pennies and attend a writers conference where you can meet writers, agents, and editors.  By attending conferences of my local chapter of SCBWI, I connected with my wonderful critique group, got professional critiques of my work, met three of the editors I’ve worked with, and met my agent.  I also learned a lot about how the writing industry works.

3.  Connect with an editor.

Editors get lots of submissions, every day.  They want to know that your manuscript landed on their desk for a reason—not just that you mailed a copy to every editor you could find in the phone book.  Most of the editors I’ve heard discuss their submissions say that anywhere from 90 – 95% of what they get is inappropriate for them, either because the work wasn’t ready to be submitted or because the author didn’t target the submission carefully.

So:  Take the time to do your homework.  Read books like Writers’ Market to see exactly what editors are looking for.  Go to bookstores and see who is publishing the kind of books you want to write.  Look on acknowledgment pages to see if authors you admire thank their editor (or agent) by name.  Make some personal connection to the editor in your query letter—you heard her speak at a conference, he’s edited a book you admire, you read in Publisher’s Weekly that she’s looking for the kind of book you’ve written.  Spend a lot of time writing and revising and polishing your query letter. 

4.  Read!

It’s not uncommon for students to tell me that they’ve stopped reading while they’re working on their first novel, because they are afraid they’ll be unduly influenced.  When a student submits a children’s novel to me in class, I can sometimes tell that they haven’t read a children’s novel since they were ten.  You don’t want to plagarize, of course, but learning from the best of today’s writers can make a huge difference in your work.

So:  Read voraciously.  Read poetry; it will help your prose.  Read what’s being published in your genre.  Read analytically, taking the time to isolate why you dislike or admire a particular novel.  Dissect your favorite books to study pacing and plot structure.

5.  Write!

Writers write.  It’s that simple.  Sometimes I meet people who want to be writers more than they want to write.  Most of the successful novelists I know carve out time for their writing, and they don’t let other things intrude.  They don’t wait for inspiration to strike.  They may have to get out of bed an hour early, or write on a shaky card table in the basement.  But they show up, and they write something, day after day.  If you end up with something lousy—well, that’s what revision is for!  But you can’t revise until you write something.

So:  Butt in chair.  Protect your writing time, and get to work! 

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Kathleen Ernst is a writer, social historian, and educator.  She’s managed to write and publish a dozen novels, and has worked with five different publishing companies.  Her most recent title is HEARTS OF STONE (Dutton, 2006).  Kathleen invites readers to visit www.kathleenernst.com for more writing tips, information about her books, teacher guides, schedule of appearances, and much more.

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