Guest Post: Breaking the Rules by Stephanie Burgis

Guys! Here’s a guest post from Stephanie Burgis! What a great post about what you should and shouldn’t do in writing, and why you should break the rules anyway. Actually, that sounds like something the heroine of Renegade Magic would do…

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BREAKING THE RULES
by Stephanie Burgis

There is one rule of publishing that has saved many, many aspiring authors from heartbreak and wasted energy: Don’t write a sequel until you’ve sold the first book!

It just makes so much sense, for so many reasons. You’ll probably never find a publisher for that second book if the first book doesn’t sell, so why not use your writing time and energy, while submitting the first book to agents or editors, to write a really stunning, completely new and different book?

In the best-case scenario, you can still write your sequel after you sign your first book/series contract, and you’ll also have a fabulous new book to sell next. Win-win! Even in the worst-case scenario, if the first book doesn’t sell, you’ll be ready right away to start the submission process fresh with something new and different.

I believe in this advice; I’ve given this advice to other writers; I’ve genuinely seen this strategy save other writers’ careers; and for several years, I followed this advice religiously myself.

Until 2007, when I flagrantly broke it.

Here’s the thing: until 2007, I had always tried to make the smart choices, the strategic choices, with my writing. I loved writing more than anything else, but still, I had my eye on the prize, which – for me – was eventual publication and a long-term career.

Then my life imploded around me, when I was diagnosed with M.E./CFS, lost my day job, and found myself physically limited to a couch. At around the same time, I turned 30, one of those ages that feels like a milestone at the time – and I amicably parted ways with my first agent.

So. In other words: I had no day job, I had no agent, I had no foot on any career ladders of any type, and I was scarily, horribly sick. (And did I mention that I’d always been an ambitious perfectionist, too? So you can just imagine how well I was taking this whole situation.)

To cut a long story short: I needed, desperately, something to make me happy.

As it turned out, writing in Kat Stephenson’s voice made me happier than any writing had ever done before.

Writing Kat, Incorrigible helped me escape and made me laugh. I loved Kat’s loving, quarrelsome, loyal family, I loved Kat’s reckless confidence. I loved writing about her jumping on top of highwaymen’s horses and performing scandalous acts of magic.

Then I finished writing the book, after joyfully hurtling through it faster than I’d ever written before…and I found myself at a sudden loss.

I knew what I had to do next: write something different while I shopped Kat, Incorrigible to agents. I absolutely knew that was the only sensible thing to do. After all, I knew from experience how hard it was to get an agent – and even once you get an agent, there’s no guarantee your book will be published.

My last agented book hadn’t sold. Why would I expect Kat, Incorrigible to sell? There was only one thing I could do now, which was: move on.

There was only one small problem: I couldn’t.

Because the thing was, I knew exactly what would happen next. There was big trouble brewing for Kat’s sister Angeline’s romance – a piece of gossip carelessly dropped in Kat, Incorrigible had made it clear that her true love’s mother would NOT approve of her. There was wild magic brewing in the Roman baths of Bath, which Kat was bound to get mixed up in. Her hapless brother Charles was just about to be unleashed on a city full of his dissipated Oxford friends, and who knew how much trouble could result from that? Kat herself was going to run into SO MUCH trouble trying to fit into the snooty magical Order of the Guardians.

I couldn’t stop now! Not before I found out what happened!

And so here’s what I finally realized: guess what? There is a very good reason not to write a sequel to any unsold book, which is: no one wants to waste time and energy. But for me, in 2007-8? It was anything but a waste.

I laughed out loud as I wrote about Kat and Angeline running afoul of a notorious rake. I cried as I wrote the magic-drenched and intensely emotional climax of the book.

In the end? Three-quarters of the way through writing Renegade Magic, my new agent sold a full trilogy of Kat novels to Atheneum Books. As a wild professional gamble, writing the sequel had actually, unexpectedly paid off…

…but the point was never my career, with these books. And the truth is, there was nothing that could have made me regret writing Renegade Magic, even if it had had to languish in my desk drawer forever. Renegade Magic had already given me the best possible gift as I wrote it: happiness, creative fulfillment and emotional escape.

This week, Kat, Incorrigible came out in paperback on exactly the same day that Renegade Magic came out in hardcover. Seeing pictures of them on North American bookshelves (from my home in Wales) fills me with amazed joy.

I really hope you guys enjoy them too.

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Stephanie Burgis is an American writer who lives in Wales with her husband, fellow writer Patrick Samphire, their son, and their border collie. Her first novel, KAT, INCORRIGIBLE, won the Waverton Good Read Children’s award in the UK and was chosen by VOYA for their list of Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers 2011. Her second novel, RENEGADE MAGIC, was named by Kirkus as a New and Notable Book for Teens. To find out more and read the first three chapters of both books, please visit her website.