Written by: Sofia Tas-Castro
I wrote my first full-length novel at 17 when I was a Junior in high school. I edited it on my own and even sent it to over 50 agents to try to get it published.
I had heard and read about how most people never get their first novels published, but I had read so many outlier stories, stories of people who wrote a novel and were so passionate about it that, like a miracle, agents could sense the passion and offered them representation.
That was not my story.
When I realized it wasn’t going to get published and I was running out of steam trying to market it out, I took a year off and let myself grow and reflect on the experience.
So, what did I learn?
1. I Could Write a Novel.
I now knew I had the ability to rite a novel. This doesn’t seem like a big thing, but to say you’re going to write a novel and to actually do it are two VERY different things. My novel wasn’t perfect, but I had sat down and got it out of my head in its entirety all on my own, something most people will never accomplish.
2. How to Write a Query Letter
Agents may never have picked up my novel, but by submitting to them, I had started the process of learning how to market myself. I read others’ letters to get a sense of how they went about summarizing their work and I edited my own letter several times to practice. I know I’m going to be published, whether it’s now or in 30 years, so honing this skill only benefits me.
3. How to Take Rejection
No matter how many articles and stories you read, no matter how strong you think you are, nothing prepares you for the onslaught of rejection that comes when trying to get published. Like I said earlier, I received over 50 rejections from agents, and while the first few really hurt, the more rejections that came in, the better I got at telling myself “This person couldn’t see the value of my work and that’s their loss, not mine.” To be in any part of the publishing industry, you have to have thick skin. Yeah, I was sad I wasn’t one of those miracle stories of how an author only had to query a handful of agents before they found “the one.” But you know what? That’s ok! Because when I do get published, my story will only be even more inspiring and getting published will feel so much better. Nothing worth having comes easily and rejection is what makes us human.
4. My Writing Style
Any writer will tell you that their writing style took time and effort to find and even then, it’s constantly evolving and changing because writers are constantly changing. However, I learned tricks for writing that worked best for me. For example, I loved to write at night with music in the background. I didn’t like to plan my stories out because I liked to let myself have the freedom to figure out what was coming next as I was writing. When I edit, I like to go through and look for content and plot holes for each chapter before thinking about overarching ideas. The only way I learned these preferences was through writing the book and trying out different techniques. Websites or social media can give you advice, but that doesn’t mean that it works or is true for you.
These are only some of the lessons I learned from writing my first novel, but they’re lessons I wouldn’t have learned without it. Writing a book takes patience, failure, tears, and loads and loads of trial and error. But the biggest thing I learned about writing? Writing, regardless of what I create, is never a waste of time. To be honest, I thought when I realized that my novel wasn’t going to get published that I had written it for nothing. But as time went on and I began writing other projects, I realized that it taught me so much about my own writing style and made me so comfortable with my own thought process that writing became easier. At the end of the day, any piece of writing or time spent writing is valuable and only serves to help you get better even if the only one who sees it is yourself.