Christy English

Two Amazing Moments in One Day

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 | Once It Is Sold, Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | 3 Comments

I had the most amazing experience today. Last night, after working into the evening on my latest draft of THE QUEEN’S PAWN, I turned my computer off, my task completed. I sent the book back to Claire via email, thinking that it still might need another pass. I have learned throughout this process that when Claire asks a question, she has always found a problem that needs to be addressed, something that I never would have found on my own. My book will be world’s better for her input. I never knew how valuable an editor was until I met Claire.

At any rate, I went to my day job today preparing to receive an email from her, asking me to make a few more adjustments. Instead, she wrote and said “It’s done! Congratulations!”

After months of working with Claire on making this novel the best I possibly could, it was transcendent to hear her say that it was done. I knew without a doubt that if she said it was ready, it was. What a relief to trust my editor! She has more than earned that trust from the moment we sat down to lunch in the West Village to discuss the current concept of the book.

So Amazing Moment #1: My manuscript got locked!

Not a minute after I received Claire’s email I got a call from my agent, Margaret. She had called to congratulate me on locking the manuscript. But there was more…Claire had also made an offer on my next novel, TO BE QUEEN. (This book will be about Eleanor of Aquitaine’s early life and her time as Queen of France. Can you tell I am obsessed with this woman? Hopefully, after you’ve read my first book, you will be, too.)

Amazing Moment # 2: My Second Book Got Sold!

I was still stunned from the joy of locking THE QUEEN”S PAWN. I am stunned and thrilled at the sale of my second book. Things can seem to be moving so slowly, at an almost glacial pace, and then suddenly, in less than one hour, everything changes; things don’t just move, they soar. One of the many difficult things about publishing a novel is that it takes so much time. But then everything comes together, and I am reminded that I am on the right path. My work is going forward, into the future, hopefully to make a difference to my readers once they open the pages of my book. That’s my job: to transport my readers to another time and place, to allow them to experience the lives of my characters, to offer them a different way to view the world.

And now it looks like I will get to do it again. As hard as this work is, I still love it.

The Queen’s Pawn on Amazon

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 | Once It Is Sold, Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | 4 Comments

I was so happy to find my novel available for Pre-Sales on Amazon. Though the cover art is not up yet, it is still exciting to see my book out in the world…one step closer to seeing it in print…

Here once more is a description of my novel and the link to find it on Amazon. I am working on getting a grass roots movement going…the more pre-sales, the better. So if my ladies interest you, hit that link.

The Queen’s Pawn by Christy English

Princess Alais of France travels to England to marry Richard the Lionhearted, the son of King Henry II, armed only with her dowry, the valuable Vexin. When Alais arrives in the land of her father’s enemies, she is welcomed by the beautiful and powerful queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor, the richest and most influential woman in Europe, sees a kindred soul in the young French princess. Intrigued by the girl’s strength and fire, Eleanor adopts Alais as her protégée, teaching the girl what it takes to be a woman of power in a world of men. But Eleanor and Alais’ love for each other is threatened when the capricious and imperious King Henry meets the lovely young princess. Fascination with the king draws Alais deep into political intrigue, and she soon discovers what Eleanor is prepared to do to retain her position as queen. Alais, the one-time pawn, takes ruthless action of her own, as the two women become rivals both for the king’s love and the throne of England itself.

Staying in the Chair: How Many Drafts Are Enough?

Friday, December 12th, 2008 | Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | No Comments

Yesterday, I wrote about what the idea of “high concept” means. Basically a marketing term, a high concept idea is a story that editors and agents can not turn their back on. But once inspiration has struck, once a stellar idea has come to you, what then? How does a writer begin to flesh it out, transforming a marketable idea into a well written novel?

Elana Roth of the Caren Johnson Literary Agency mentioned that while she has received many solid query letters outlining marketable ideas, often when she reads the first pages of the manuscript, the novel falls short. Essentially, the writer has honed her idea to a sharp point, but has not finished crafting the novel itself.

This is a trend I heard of for the first time at the San Francisco Writers’ Conference in February of this year. Editors and agents alike were complaining that writers were sending in fabulous ideas without a well written novel to back them up. I think this trend could be turned if writers stayed in the chair for a few drafts more, before trying to market their material.

While I know of one author who pounded out a fabulous novel in the first draft, she is the exception rather than the rule. She also spent years honing her craft of storytelling through other mediums. At conferences over the last two years, I heard people enthusiastic about their stories, but who were essentially trying to sell their novels too soon. If a novel is sent out before it is ready, it ends up getting rejected by agents, and never makes it to editors.

Rejection is an essential step in the process of becoming a published author, but I fear that it is happening more than it needs to. A writer sends out her first draft, has it rejected, then gives up the craft out of the fear that she or her work isn’t good enough. Instead of sending out a novel in its first or second drafts, a writer might consider staying in the chair another year, and honing the book. No writer is good in the beginning. Each one of us has to stay in front of the computer, or blank pad, and keep writing until what we write is interesting to others.

I think in the rush to get published and to get recognition for hard work already done, writers are not enjoying the first years of their craft. The first years when they can find their voice, when they can hone their craft and build their stories, a time when no one reads their work but them. Though there is no glory in this time, there can be a lot of joy. When it was only me and my characters getting to know each other on the page, I loved my work in a way that was different from the way I love it now. I adore my work and characters, but for the last three years I have had a professional audience: my agent and later the editors who read my manuscripts. While my awareness of my audience did not take the bliss from my writing, it did color the experience. It was gratifying to know that someone besides my mother would be reading my novels, but I also had a sense that I was writing for an outside eye, a different experience altogether from writing for myself alone.

My opinion, for what it is worth, is: stay in the chair. Find your voice. Classes and MFA programs and writing groups can help up to a point. They can make a lonely profession feel less lonely; they can help a writer feel less adrift in an uncharted sea. But essentially, the uncharted sea is where we live. The ocean of the imagination, with the land behind us, nothing visible but the sea and sky, is where the stories are. And essentially we must sail that sea alone, pen in hand, riding each wave as it comes, until the book is finished, and we are washed up on shore once more.

Writing is lonely work, which is why we have characters to tell us their stories. They are our companions on that sea, our only ones. No class or group or friend or lover can go there with us. It is our role to sail that sea, and bring our stories home.

The only way to learn to do this, and to do it well, is to keep writing. Reynolds Price once said in a keynote speech for the NC Writer’s Conference, “Go into a room, close the door behind you, and write.” He made this statement years ago, and I am no doubt misquoting him, but his advice spoke to me. It was a beacon on my own uncharted sea. And in truth, the sea is where I prefer to live.

Find your voice. Keep writing. Stay in the chair.

High Concept: Where Art Meets Commerce

Thursday, December 11th, 2008 | Once It Is Sold, Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | No Comments

Last night, a couple of friends took me to dinner to celebrate my long-awaited sale. One of them was Elana Roth from the Caren Johnson Literary Agency. We had an interesting discussion of what makes a “high concept” story. Elana works with Children’s fiction, Middle Reader’s fiction, and YA fiction. My focus is adult historical fiction, but storytelling is storytelling. What makes an agent or an editor hear a pitch or an idea and say, “Yes, I have to read that”?

No doubt it takes more than one thing to catch an agent’s or an editor’s eye: a well polished query and a professional presentation are just the beginning.  Beyond the mechanics of making a pitch, what about the concept itself? What makes one irresistible and another simply one more letter in the slush pile?

To find Elana’s definition of what “high concept” means, please look on the Caren Johnson Literary Agency’s website:

www.johnsonlitagency.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/defining-high-concept

From talking to Elana, I gathered that a high concept idea can be summed up in one sentence, and contains something unexpected, a hook or a twist that is unique and interesting. A writer with a high concept storyline then must have the talent and dedication to execute it. This post is about what “high concept” means. In my next post, I will write about the challenge of making your writing good enough for an editor to buy. As you may imagine, the later is much harder, and often takes years.

A high concept story idea can be handed to a writer by the Muse, or discovered waiting in line at the supermarket, or while reclining in the dentist’s chair. Or, if a writer is very lucky, as I was, an editor or agent will take the time to make a suggestion that will transform a good storyline into one that can not be turned from.

My novel, The Queen’s Pawn, began as a novel told solely from the point of view of Alais, Princess of France. While Alais’ voice was compelling and garnered compliments from various editors, it did not secure a sale. Only when Eleanor of Aquitaine joined the novel, and added her voice to the story, did the book take flight. The story of A Lion in Winter as told from the point of view of the French princess is interesting, but is not high concept. The story of Eleanor of Aquitaine and her protégée, Alais of France, battling for King Henry’s love and for the throne of England is high concept.

Queries can be improved and concepts can be heightened, but ultimately, every writer must follow her Muse in her own way. A high concept storyline just makes a book easier to sell.

Getting The Call

Friday, November 21st, 2008 | Once It Is Sold, Selling Your Work, The Writing Life | 1 Comment

As a writer who has spent ten years pursuing my art, getting the call from my agent that my book sold was the highlight not only of this year, but of my life to date.  It is hard to convey the significance of this. I am still trying to process the experience.  Everyone has a dream, whatever that dream might be. My dreams, like those of most people, have shifted somewhat over time. From a fasciantion with acting and theatre, I moved into writing fiction ten years ago. Writing novels is all I have wanted to do for the last ten years. I have written more than one complete novel, and now that I have sold one, I am delirious with joy.

As I try to reach for the language to express the feeling of accomplishment, I fail. Others have spoken to me of how lovely it must be to finally have the external validation of a sale, to know that others value my work. While this is true, it is not as large a factor as I thought it would be. I find that what gives me the greatest joy is knowing that my words will be read by those I do not know, that my characters’ stories will be told to those whom I will never meet. I feel at last as if I have fulfilled the next step in my mission: these stories have been entrusted to me, and now I see that they will finally go out into the world. Whether others receive them as warmly as I hope is beyond my control. (Yes, the thing about reaching one goal is beginning to hope for another: in this case, I hope to sell out my print run and have a second.) My book will be out in the world in little over a year, and I feel finally as if I have done my job.