Posts by Heather Reid
We are so pleased that today’s guest is Heather Reid. You may know Heather from her role as a member of the fearsome Mod Squad for WU’s Facebook community. What you may not know is that Heather is both American and British and has called six different cities in three different countries, home. Her strong sense of wanderlust and craving for a new adventure mean you might find her wandering the moors of her beloved Scotland, exploring haunted castles, or hiking through a magical forest in search of fairies and sprites. When she’s not venturing into the unknown in her real life, she loves getting lost in the worlds of video games or curling up by the fire with good story. For now, this native Texan is back in the Lone Star State, settling down with her Scottish husband and dreaming up new novels to write.
Her debut young adult paranormal novel, PRETTY DARK NOTHING, releases April 23 by Month 9 Books. Please follow Heather on Twitter and on her Facebook page to learn more. We are excited to support Heather’s debut.
Take it away, Heather!
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.” – Woodrow Wilson
Should I hold or should I fold? A lot of writers wonder when enough is enough, especially when it comes to selling their first novel. How do you know if it’s time to give up on a manuscript and move on or keep striving to find a home for it? Most of us are all too familiar with that feeling of pouring our hearts out on the page only to hit a wall when it comes time to release our first baby into the world. Rejections come hard and fast. They hurt, and we begin to believe the age-old tale that our first book will never sell.
That’s exactly where I found myself seven years ago. After three long years of drafting, revising, and polishing the YA paranormal novel that would later become my debut, Pretty Dark Nothing, I took a leap of faith and sent it out into the world. After several rejections, I got what I thought was my golden ticket. An editor from one of the Big Six asked for a full. I could hardly contain myself. She was excited about the project and gushed enthusiastically about the first thirty pages. This was it. It had to be. So I submitted and waited. Nine months later I received a nice ‘thanks but no thanks’ letter. Devastated, I convinced myself that if this editor didn’t want it, nobody else would either. It was time to give up. I threw the manuscript in a box and tried to forget about it, move on, write something new.
But what if you can’t? How do you know your first novel is worth fighting for?
Read MoreToday’s guest post comes from Heather Reid. Heather was a finalist for our Unpubbed Author contributor. We loved her sample, which is graceful and powerful. We were charmed by her whimsy and sense of humor, because, in her own words:
I’m a geeky Texan living in England, married to a Scotsman. Doesn’t that make me unique? Surely there aren’t two geeky Texans living in England, married to a Scotsman. If you can find one, please give them my number. I need a new friend. To which I add… nothing, as this answer has gone on long enough already.
Give a child a bed sheet and they build a tent. They imagine it’s surrounded by trees (a coat rack) and wild animals (the pillows from the sofa). Give a bed sheet to an adult and they fold it and put it away in the closet. As children we are often praised for creativity, encouraged to dream, to draw, to play in a world of fantasy. Creativity isn’t something to think about, read about, or take classes for. It’s something that comes as second nature. So why, as adults, do we talk about creativity as this great quest-an ethereal being we must woo in order to write? When did creativity become so much work?
As we get older, society tells us it’s time to grow up, to stop dreaming, to live in the real world, to fold our creativity up and put it in the closet. We grow up and become aware of rejection, of failure, of judgement, of fear. When I sit down to write, that fear chatters away in the back of my mind. It reminds me that I’m not published yet and that I’ve been rejected by another agent on my list. It whispers that my book might not be on trend or the characters might be too one dimensional. It makes me second guess myself, it chases my creative muse around the room; it steals truth and authenticity from my words. Fear urges me to conform to the world, to see it through jade coloured glasses. But children, children are fearless when it comes to creativity.
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