A Young Writer Coming Up

By: Mia L. Hazlett
2/20/2018

I promised I would chronicle the journey to finding an agent and publisher. But a couple of things happened that same week in October when I was so full of hope. I received rejections 53 and 54. These were  from those who responded, not including those I never heard back from again.

So, I did what any person who wasn’t serious about achieving their goals would do, I quit. Yup. I quit submitting my manuscript to agents. I gave up on myself and my manuscript. Not writing, just my manuscript. I figured it was crap and obviously if an agent didn’t want it, then nobody would ever want to read it. I bashed myself for putting in so much time on such a crappy piece of work. I’m really good at the pity party thing.

But new year, new me, blah blah. Kinda like that, but my New Year’s resolution was to invest in myself. This was going to be my selfish year. And I was on Facebook, instead of writing, well trying to write, and up popped a memory. A memory of the day I finished the first draft of my manuscript.

I instantly remembered that day. I remembered how I felt and also how many years that draft represented. I realized how much that manuscript taught me about writing.  How much research I did to craft the perfect story. How it convinced me to take the traditional route to publishing over my previous route. It pushed me to learn how to submit my work to agents, which unfortunately introduced me to my evil nemesis, The Query Letter.

So I shut down the pity party and came across a Writer’s Digest post in my feed – yes, I still hadn’t returned to writing. It was a boot camp, which allowed me to send in my first ten pages to literary agents and get this, they would read them. I had spent a year trying to get my work read and now here was the opportunity. I invested, was assigned an agent, submitted my ten pages, received feedback, made revisions, and resubmitted.

I received positive feedback and a critique on the first submission. It allowed me to look at my manuscript in a totally different light. It allowed me some direction with my rewrite. But it also brought in another aspect that I never considered, the selling aspect. I was so in love with the writing and story, that I never thought about if it could sell.

My advice to you if you are a young writer coming up, invest into your craft. There are resources out there. Find them. If you think it’s too expensive, save for it. This small investment has given me enough courage to face my evil nemesis, The Query Letter. I signed up for another course which allows me to submit a query letter to an agent and you guessed it, they have to respond. Well okay, not respond, but critique. So, I’ll follow up and let you know who won, me or my evil nemesis.

By: Mia L. Hazlett
10/2/2017

I haven’t been here in a while. I finally turned Macy into a novel and finished the manuscript. Woo-hoo, well kinda. Now to find an agent, sell my book to a big publisher, and live off royalties. BAHAHA. Oh how naïve of me.

I’ve decided to chronicle my little journey of getting my book published. It will keep me from giving up, maybe.

My first book, Going Through It, was self-published. I’ll be honest, I’m sure I gave away more than I sold. The thing about self-publishing, you’re instantly published. You create your manuscript, hire an editor, design a cover, and upload. Easy enough. No matter the research you do, prepare to be your own cheerleader and marketer. Like constantly. On every platform. Everywhere!

When I completed self-publishing my book, I lived in my parents’ basement and had lost everything. I had no platforms, or any idea how to market my book. I won’t bash myself, because I made an incredible accomplishment. I fulfilled my lifetime dream of becoming a published author. The next time I dream, I’ll be more specific and add “successful”.

Now that I’ve finished my second manuscript, I’m going the traditional route- agent and publisher. I’m not saying self-publishing doesn’t produce success, but I’m not interested in publishing.

Beyond the basic tools, entering into the arena of traditional publishing, I come with research. I’ve read, I’ve followed, and I’ve chased every answer to the little questions that pop into my head. I’m better informed to pursue this channel of fulfilling my publishing dream.

I’ve edited my manuscript. I’ve gone through the Beta readers. I’ve been building my social media platforms, and started keeping my blogs current. I say it with ease. It’s not. I’m an executive assistant to a president and board of trustees, 9-5 doesn’t exist in my world. I have a teenager who is about to drive and a middle schooler who doesn’t think I’m cool anymore. My writing takes me into the wee hours of the night.

What have I had to learn? What is a query letter? Had no clue what it was. On every submission page, everyone wants a query letter and sometimes a synopsis. I had to develop both. I found, I could write an entire novel, but a simple letter was crippling. But I researched what a query letter was and how to write it.

At this point in my hunt for an agent, I’ve received 45 rejections. Probably 18 actual rejections and just haven’t heard back from those others. Honestly, it’s hard. I’m questioning myself. I’ve thought about self-publishing. Then I thought about rewriting the entire book. But then I realized, I can’t give up on myself and the years I put into my art.  Obviously I would never reject myself, that’s why self-publishing was so easy. Submitting my work to agents and absorbing the rejection is part of the traditional publishing journey. Stay tuned.

Please enjoy the first chapter of my upcoming book, Macy.  You’ve been following the short story for years, and I’ve fallen in love with her so much, I feel she deserves her own book.  I hope you enjoy.

By:Mia L. Hazlett

Chapter 1

Hate – void of love. Just as passionate as love. Just as consuming. And just as hard to release. So why did I hate this dead woman?  I just did. A lifetime of hate was inexplicable. But, hating this woman for as long as I could remember was normalcy.

I stared at her dead body in the casket and continued to hate her. My head was not bowed in prayer like my mother, who knelt next to me on the hard padded bench. Instead, my eyes absorbed this wretched still woman. As I stared at her, in that same exact moment, I remembered being told, “Pretty gal, you gon waste away all ya time and energy hatin’ her. She don’t even know it. And baby if she did, she wouldn’t care. Wouldn’t care a damn bit.”

At this very moment, I understood what my mother was telling me about wasted time and energy. I never told this woman I hated her. I thought it. Boy had I thought it. Now, as I looked at her pasty dark tar face, it wasn’t her I hated. I hated hate. It was an obsessive, stressful, controlling emotion, which had governed my life. Even though I knelt before her lifeless body, I was still in hate with her. Yet, the peace upon her face told me, she was already in the kingdom of eternal love. Oh how I hated hate.

Beyond this moment of lifelessness and unfulfilled hate, another revelation knocked at my conscience, my hate for her stemmed from her hate for me. We were in hate with each other. Her matriarchal position allowed her limitless torment. All the while, my position remained the weaker because of my birth. I was born being me.

I stood with my mother, but before I walked away from my lifetime bully, I finally bowed my head and hated. It may have been eye to closed-eye, but I was finally able to look down on her. My twenty-two years of loathing the woman I shared a name with, came down to two sentences, From one Macy to another, I’m happy you’re dead. I hope you burn in hell grandmother.

©2015 Mia L. Hazlett