The book journey begins

How many times have you been told you can’t rest on your laurels?
For me, too many times!

Nevertheless, I am going to rest on a few laurels for a day or two before I get back to work. For three years I have been sweating away at a novel. Yes, the Great Canadian Novel (except that it takes place in three different centuries and nowhere in Canada) is slowly but surely gestating and growing. It is titled Caliburn and is set in three different times: the 6th, 14th and 21st centuries

I have been in the communication and media business for many years (don’t ask how many, I won’t tell) but writing fiction is a new challenge. It is a skill set that requires radical new ways (for me) of writing. And it is often a Catch 22 situation: if you don’t have an agent, you won’t get published but on the other hand, if you’re not published you can’t get an agent.

Well, the breakthrough occurred. I got an agent! I had contacted him a year ago. He agreed to take a look at it, but warned me that he was going to send it to an editor who would evaluate it for him before he agreed to take me on. Nice. Well last week the evaluation came through. Let me brag a bit. That hard-nosed editor’s response was “Wow!” and compared my book to a cross between Clive Cussler and Stephen Lawhead. At other places she compared me to Dan Brown. High company and my ego was well and truly flattered. Wow indeed!

The agent immediately offered to represent me and flog (my words, not his) the book to US publishers. Needless to say, I accepted.

So let me rest on the laurels for a while.

You see, this week the real work begins. Now I have to rewrite great chunks of it. I have to revise, change scenes, create more structure and better pacing and on and on and on. But I thought it was good?!

A friend recently told me that writers create good books, but editors make them.

So I am going to take his and the editor’s advice. Rewrite and revise will be my new mantra.