The novel I am working on at the moment is women’s fiction. It revolves around a group of friends in their forties with an impossible decision. It’s fun, fast paced and because I am in my forties as well – relatable. This novel is the first I have written that I thought might be marketable. I’ve seen woman’s fiction on manuscript wishlists, but the main reason is I can think of many comp titles I could use when I reach the point of writing my query letter.
My first novel, a YA astral travelling adventure, has an older YA protagonist (bordering NA) and is a weirdly thing. So weird no one seems to like it. Except me of course. That’s why I have written drafts of the next three books in the series and love it profoundly. I am attached to the characters and maybe one day astral projection novels will be in. Who knows? The only thing I do know is I had a ball writing it, think about the characters all the time and am genuinely proud of myself. With the added bonus of knowing this is how I grew my writing muscle. Between the four books I’ve written over 240,000 words.
My second novel, another YA about a group of kids whose town falls asleep, has had better luck. It’s longlisted and shortlisted in competitions, had positive comments from agents, had full manuscript requests from publishers. This one I was able to find comps too, but still it was a stretch. There are climate change elements so I added climate change books. It is written in third person, so I looked for books with a similar writing style. But nothing that really seemed like it could be sitting beside it on the shelf. The reason might be it is a weirdly thing as well.
My sixth novel may have a better chance of fitting in, but do I want it to? Maybe. I do want to be traditionally published. There’s still moments in my novel though where I think - Is this too strange? Is anyone going to get this?
I guess that’s what we do as writers though. Throw things out into the void and hope that someone – anyone – will get this. We want to be relatable. We want people to feel.
Writers are observers. What we observe, we twist and turn and put it into words to make it our own. When someone reads these words, they are changed. A quantum shift. That’s magical.
I’m going to keep writing my unthinkably exquisite and weirdly things and I hope you do too. Please leave me a note in the comments of the weirdly thing you are working on - I would love to hear about them!
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