Tag Archives: Literary Agent

The Memoir brought to print

When I began writing, I had no idea what I would ultimately be doing with my completed manuscript. I spent no time planning for the future and instead either wrote or edited whenever I could. Consequently, several months passed by before I even began to investigate what the next steps might possibly be. Somehow, I knew that I had to just keep on writing. I just kept my attention focused on the task at hand, the new manner of self-expression that I had been granted.

Agraduation-1311224pproximately thirteen years prior to beginning The Primal Contradiction, I was given the opportunity to return to school in order to finish college and obtain a bachelor’s degree. While I was there, I quickly learned that I enjoyed writing immensely and that my instructors recognized the aptitude growing within me.

Over the next few years, I spent nearly all of my days off from my current job writing papers for school, eventually earning a Bachelor of Science in Business & Management. It truly was a special time in my life that I will always treasure and never forget. But unfortunately, I was unable to transform what I had learned into any kind of meaningful purpose—not until many years later when I realized that I needed to begin the process of writing a book.

Although the ideas and memories that came to me while working on the manuscript seemed to be originating from somewhere outside of me, I readily took them in and really enjoyed transferring them to paper. It was a challenge that I never shied away from. I never lost the initial excitement that I had found when I began. I was able to write the bulk of the story down in just over four months but definitely needed to spend the following year making the whole thing more readable.

Soon, I began to inquire and then understood exactly what I would need to do with the
completed manuscript. The information I found was quite pointed—little hope, if any, was granted to the first-time-attachment-2-1240615writer. Finding someone who would consider taking on a new author was described as being nearly impossible. But I began sending letters to literary agents anyway, perhaps a hundred or more over the next few months. Not one recipient showed any interest. The majority did not reply.

I read about self-publishing and found there were other alternatives available to me, so I decided to pay for the privilege of being an author. The whole process was quite organized and completed in a timely manner. In effect, the process of having a book brought to production in this way simply entailed pre-paying for all that was provided. I was given some amount of control, and I was also quite pleased with the overall results. I never really knew how much I wanted to write a book until I was able to open up and turn the pages of my own.