Orna Ross on Getting Published
May 28, 2009
To turn Dickens back to front, it was the worst of times, it was the best of times. For me, the path to publication was long, full of emotional twists and turns, highs and lows – not unlike the novel,
Lovers Hollow, that I was trying to get into print.
Every writer who wants to be published, especially ones who don’t have a best friend in the publishing industry, has been there: the please-like-me-and-my-book subjection and rejection routine.
Creating a book, creating a sale, creating a readership: these are not easy tasks -- and they call on very different skills and characteristics.
I don’t know how many refusals I got for
Lovers Hollow, because it was my policy to delete or tear them up as soon as they arrived. This was part of handling the submission process in a very systematic way. So I wouldn’t get caught up in the emotion of it all, I treated it as a numbers game. I made three lists of 30 editors, an A, B and C list, and began by sending a batch of queries off to the first 10 on the A list.
It was my intention to work my way methodically through the lot, if necessary. I promised myself I wouldn’t give up until I reached the end of that list -- and maybe not even then.
I set aside two hours on each Monday afternoon for the task. When I got rejections, I just glanced at them, and then set them aside to be dealt with in this time slot. The rest of the time I kept my energy and attention on writing, working on my next novel.
Each "Marketing Monday", I would look at and think about the latest rejection(s), see if there was anything to learn. If I felt there was, I went back to the proposal or manuscript and tried to improve it another bit before sending it off again. I always had another "hit" waiting, to replace the one that had just refused it and I absolutely refused to indulge feelings of dejection or disillusionment.
Eventually the break came and I was lucky that when it came, it came big - a generous two-book deal from Penguin.
Around the same time, I was representing a writer who had attended one of my courses in her dealings with a prospective publisher and had also joined the Irish Writers’ Union at committee level -- so I was becoming very familiar with a variety of publishing contracts. Next thing I knew, I was acting as agent for other writers.
I no longer do that work, but along the way I’ve seen many writers struggle along the pathway to publication. I know that it’s rarely easy. Those who do best are those who realise that publication is a side issue, that the most important work, and the highest priority, is always the writing.
Eventually, there comes a day when you realise that what seemed like the worst of times for your writing can actually turn out to have been the best. And that writing is, as the novelist Doris Betts put it, “a hard way to make a living but a great way to make a life”.
About Orna Ross
Orna Ross was brought up in the Co. Wexford village of Murrintown. After graduating from University College Dublin she worked as a secondary school teacher, as a saleswoman, as a barmaid, as an aerobics instructor and health club manager, as a waitress and eventually as a journalist. In the mid-90s, after a stint living in London and Cheshire, Orna went back to UCD, completed an MA and now combines writing with part-time teaching on BA, MA and outreach programs. She lives in Dublin with her husband and two teenage children. Novels published by Penguin include
Lovers' Hollow and
A Dance in Time.
Orna Ross Profile at OnceWritten.com
