Why I’m Financing My Own Book Advance This Time Around
I’ve been sitting on an idea for a new novel for nearly seven years now. This idea, which would be my fourth novel if accepted for publication, will be a big novel that will require at least a year of research, which is another way of saying that it will be expensive for me to write.
In the nonfiction world, I could try to sell the book on a “proposal” — a hefty document that contains an overview, sample chapters, comp titles and even a marketing plan for the book I’ve yet to write. But in the fiction world, where my new idea would fall, I have to show at least several chapters of the project in order to land a book deal: this is known as selling a book on a partial.
Writing three chapters and selling a whole book? That sounds like a dream, right? It certainly sounded like one to me when I was lucky enough to sell a novel in this manner many years ago. But you know what has happened in the time since that book deal? I’ve gotten to know my writing process as intimately as the bunions that I inherited from my mother. At forty years old plus, my writing process (and my bunions) are both unfortunately ingrained.
From the outside, my writing process might look like I sit down with a book idea and write and revise a draft until it’s ready for publication. In reality, my writing process looks like me…
