Posts Tagged ‘writing assumptions’

A 12-Step Program for Writers

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

1. We admit that we are powerless over publishers, and that our careers have ecome completely unmanageable.
2. We believe that an Agent far greater than Our Last Agent can restore us to publications, sales, and critical acclaim.
3. We have made a decision to turn our lives and our professional careers over completely to our New Agent. God help us.
4. We have made a searching and fearless inventory of every old unsold scrap and fragment of manuscript in the bottoms of our filing cabinets, in hopes of finding something we can sell to somebody, somewhere.
5. We have proclaimed to God, to ourselves, and to anyone else who would listen the exact nature of the many failings of our former editors and publishers.
6. We are entirely ready to let someone else take the blame for the way our last book tanked.
7. We humbly hope our new publisher will not find out what we said about our last publisher.
8. We have made a list of all the persons we have harmed, in fear that one of them may someday become the new editor at Bantam.
9. We have made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except for those talentless yutzes who will clearly never become an important editor or publisher. Oh, but they might become reviewers.
10. We will continue to take inventory of our old unsold stuff, in hopes that something will germinate in the dark and suddenly and spontaneously become a best-seller.
11. We have sought through prayer and the Internet to improve our conscious contact with Our New Editor, praying that she will stay with the publisher long enough to get our latest book out the door.
12. Having had a professional awakening as the result of these steps, we will guard our new knowledge jealously. Why give the up-and-coming competition a break?

Tags: writing assumptions
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