WITH!!!! Love Inspired Senior Editor Emily Rodmell!!!
As an editor, I’m always in awe of authors who work full time, raise children and still find time to write multiple books a year. When I’ve asked them how they do it, I’ve gotten answers ranging from getting up before the chickens (and children) to write or staying up late to get words on the page or writing on lunch breaks from work or in the car while kids are at soccer practice. The one thing they all have in common is that they make the commitment to sit down and write, and they stick to it.
As an editor, I’m always in awe of authors who work full time, raise children and still find time to write multiple books a year. When I’ve asked them how they do it, I’ve gotten answers ranging from getting up before the chickens (and children) to write or staying up late to get words on the page or writing on lunch breaks from work or in the car while kids are at soccer practice. The one thing they all have in common is that they make the commitment to sit down and write, and they stick to it.
Did you know that if you wrote 1,000 words a day, you could
have a Love Inspired book (55K words) in less than 2 months? You could build in
time for editing, revising and vacations and still complete 4 books a year.
Your average
manuscript page has somewhere between 200-300 words per page depending on font,
margins and spacing. So 1,000 words is about 3-5 pages. While a whole
manuscript may seem daunting, 3-5 pages is a manageable chunk. If you can write
those small chunks every day, they can really add up. If 1K is too much for
you, break it down even further. 500 words a day (a measly 1-3 pages) could
give you a manuscript in 4 months. With time for editing, you could have 2
books a year, which is the number that a lot of our authors strive for.
To offer you further motivation, Love Inspired just launched
a new pitch opportunity yesterday. From
Blurb to Book: Pitch, Write and Sell Your Book in 5 months. We’re on the
hunt for fresh new voices and are giving you the chance to pitch us your idea. The
authors chosen to move on in the pitch contest will get guidance along the way from
the Love Inspired editors as they work to complete a proposal and manuscript.
Check out our announcement here:
You’ve got a little less than
two weeks to submit a 100 word blurb and your first page of a book targeted to
one of the three Love Inspired lines (Love Inspired, Love Inspired Suspense and
Love Inspired Historical). All you need is an idea and the drive to write to
take that first step. And you’ll find out if your initial entry wowed the
editors 10 days after the deadline!
Last year we had a pitch session
called The Search for a Killer Voice, and many of the entrants said that having
to meet deadlines along the way helped them stay on track and finally finish a
book. We hope the same will be true this year. We’ll be offering guidance,
feedback and inspiration as you write your books. We’ve posted two blogs in the
forums on Harlequin.com already. One on how to write a great blurb and first
page and another on what the Love Inspired lines are looking for (cowboys,
Amish, law enforcement heroes and more). There are also forums to ask questions
of the editors and to support and interact with your fellow writers.
Looking for even more
motivation? In the past few years, we’ve offered contracts to more than 20
authors through our pitch sessions. They’re sharing their success stories here:
http://community.harlequin.com/showthread.php/2661-Success-Stories. In fact, three of the authors who sold less than a year
ago through our pitch The Search For a Killer Voice, will see their books on
the shelves next month. If you want to see what we bought last year, check out
Fatal Freeze by Michelle Karl, Presumed Guilty by Dana R. Lynn and Royal Rescue
by Tammy Johnson. April also marks the debut of Targeted by Becky Avella who
sold through the prior year’s Happily Editor After pitch session.
Anyone who has not been
published with Love Inspired can enter. New authors and authors published with
other houses are welcome. Agented and
unagented alike can enter. You can use a pseudonym as long as your legal name
is in the entry for our records. I hope that you all take advantage of this
opportunity. If you’ve never tried to write a Love Inspired book before but
always wondered if you could, this is your chance. Love Inspired books have a
wide distribution. They are sold through our book club, in mass market
retailers such as Wal-Mart, in bookstores and in all major ebook retailers.
It’s a great way to get your writing in front of a wide audience of avid fans
of inspirational fiction. Start writing today, and you could have a contract by
the end of the summer. We’re eager to find and nurture new voices for the Love
Inspired lines, and so get started on your blurbs and first pages. I’ll be
stopping in today to answer any questions you might have, so fire away.
