Author Confessions: We Don’t Always Get to Publish the Story We Want

That seems kind of odd to say doesn’t it? If I publish a story, wasn’t it the one I wanted to publish? Not necessarily. There are several reasons why an author doesn’t always get to publish the story they want to.

Reason 1: The story is not one that a publisher accepts. This might be because the author hasn’t found the right publisher for their story. Or maybe they did but the publisher already published something similar or has something similar in the works. Even with fiction they don’t want to publish stories that are too close in concept. I have received stories that were no where near what our publisher would accept as they violate our core principles (not Christian faith represented, foul language, sex…) and those I had to politely reject.

Reason 2: The story isn’t ready yet. This happens quite often where an author submits a story that needs a lot more polishing. As an editor I used to give a lot more feedback on stories like this but after being taken advantage of too often I can no longer do this. Yes, I was a sucker. I understand how hard it is to be published so I would read the entire story and give concrete feedback on how it could be improved. This is something I was not paid for. One author responded and said: “I knew it wasn’t ready but wanted your free edit.” Really? Now that wouldn’t have been so bad if she had resubmitted it to me with the changes so I could have maybe recouped my time in some kind of compensation down the line. I told that author’s agent that he should never submit any of her work to me again. She had taken the story, reworked it, and submitted it to someone else and got published. And to be honest, I don’t have that kind of time to do that for free.

Reason 3: There are drastic changes that need to be made to the story. This happened to me. I had a story, Truffles & Traffic and I tried something a little different with four points-of-view. I’d seen another author do this successfully and thought maybe I’d give it a shot. My editor hated the concept and I had to rewrite the story drastically, removing that romance to only be seen through the eyes of the two primary characters. I think the story is still good, but it wasn’t want I had wanted to publish. I tried something and failed at it. Now maybe another publisher would have liked that but had already contracted it before being given that news so I did the work to get it changed.

Reason 4: The author never submits the story. Yes, this happens way too often. I might meet an author at a conference and hear his or her pitch for a story and get excited about it and want to see it. Fear often sets in. Sure they might work on it more based on suggestions or things they learned at the conference but either they chicken out and fear the rejection or they realize this is more work than they really want to put into it. I attended a conference where an author got a book contract and the editor said he didn’t know whether to congratulate her or feel sorry for her because now the hard work was going to begin. Another part of this is that some authors have stories they wrote or started and never finished. Fear? They started writing something different and left one behind. It just never gets published and that’s OK!

This actually happened to my friend DeeDee Lake who I finally co-authored several books with. She had started it and had a lot of ideas but the timeline didn’t work and she had too many plot points to fit well into one book. As a result we wrote four together! The first story wasn’t want she initially intended, but I think it was better.

Reason 5: Not ever story needs to be published. Writing can be it’s own reward. I’ve met with many people who want to write and I encourage them to do it, but don’t start out writing with the goal of being published. While it would be lovely if every story could be published, it is a lot of work and sometimes writing your story, your experiences, or even something creative, is all that you need. There is catharsis in doing that. I’ve seen people make their own books to only share with family but not sell to the wider public and that is fine as well. Not every story needs to go through the gamut of the publishing industry to have value. If you write something and love it and want to share it with the world and are willing to commit to the work it takes to get published? Then go for it.

Reason 6: Something in your story is triggering something in the editor. Whew, this is a tough one. Usually if I contract a story, I’m the editor for it, but we have copyeditors as well and sometimes it might be that person who has an issue with something in your story. This might result from a bad experience they’ve had and they might react to some of the content or the way your story takes shape. The reality is not every story is right for everybody. I had an author pitch a story and something about it made me uncomfortable. We’d published other stories by her and we wanted to work with her. My Editor-in-chief gave a suggestion about how it could be changed to be more palatable but due to the initial “yuck” factor I asked that it be assigned to another editor. It was. Then that editor needed to resign due to health issues and it ended up back on my plate. It was a fine story but due to the emotions I had the first time around I never could shake that “yuck” feeling although with the changes it was just fine. I had this happen to one of my stories as well and finally I needed to ask for a different editor because I realized the emotional reaction she’d had to my story, even after I made many of the changes she requested, meant that she’d not be able to accept that it was MY story and some of what she asked for, I wasn’t willing to change. That’s a hard road to travel as an author. I’ve even called authors to talk to them when a copy editor has had an issue–mostly so they understand that I am in their corner and I love their story–but could you go back and make these changes? Every time it has been good but sometimes the personal touch is important. Otherwise most of what is communicated is on paper and it can lose the validation that an author really does need. Publishing can be a scary process.

I have other stories that changed drastically over the course of editing, before and after being contracted, so they weren’t the story I originally intended to tell. Some of that is me growing as an author in my craft, but it’s good to remember that sometimes even after a contract, significant changes might be made to a manuscript. A good editor will understand your voice and respect that. Still, before you submit a story, remember that we don’t always get to publish the story we want--but hopefully it will be even better than what you had planned for.