Faking Insanity: Writing The Novel
Back in the days when I was first sitting down to write my novel, I’d read anything I could get my hands on that described how an author first got published. I was immediately drawn in, looking for clues how the author “made it.” I wanted to know the essence of that experience. I wanted to plumb whatever pearls of wisdom the author had to impart. Was there a process, a secret formula, a decoder ring I could use to apply to my own efforts, something that would ensure success?
You know, something to make the whole getting-a-book-published thing a reality, and not just a pipe dream that would be forever just out of reach.
The more I read, the more I realized the path to publishing success—like so much in life—is (almost) never a straight line. Every author has her own individual story, unique to her.
The same has been true for me. If I plotted my own novel’s progress graphically, it wouldn’t be a straight line at all, but a series of stops and starts. Perhaps the best representation of my writer’s path would be more akin to a Rube Goldberg contraption, complete with complicated levers and hidden trapdoors.
Occasionally, I came across an article from a debut author whose progress was linear. The author wrote a great book, took little time to write it, found a top agent who then sold the manuscript at auction to a Big Five house because the writing and the story were top notch. In other words, the literary equivalent of a home run. But these instances are, and remain, a rarity in the publishing world today.
I ended up spending five years in the trenches before I got a publishing deal. None of those years were easy, but it turns out all of them were educational.
Sometime in 2014, I stumbled across the real-life story of a twenty-three-year-old woman named Elizabeth Cochrane, better known by her pen name as Nellie Bly. In 1887, after working as a reporter in Pittsburgh for a few years, she set out for New York to get hired by the largest paper on the planet at the time, Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World. There was only one problem: she was a woman. The paper wouldn’t hire her.
Would-be women reporters of the era had to go to extraordinary lengths to prove themselves in the male-dominated journalism world. So in exchange for a job, Nellie struck a dangerous deal—she’d fake insanity, get herself committed to the Blackwell’s Island Insane Asylum for women, stay for ten days, and write of her experience after. I was desperate to read the book. Who was this gutsy woman? When I searched for the novel and found it didn’t exist, I decided to write it myself.
By the time Nanowrimo ended that year, I was almost 50% through the manuscript. Then I began to second-guess myself. Was this the right story? Why hadn’t anyone else, in the 120-plus years that had elapsed since it happened, written a novel about it? Most of all: did I have what it took to write a novel, or was I just a hack?
What followed were months of excruciating self-doubt. I decided to shelve the novel and embark on two book-related research trips. The first was to Apollo, PA where I saw Nellie’s childhood home. I also met members of the Apollo historical society who were happy to learn that someone, at last, was writing a novel about their famous former resident.
The highlight of that trip, however, was my trip to the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh where I got my (gloved) hands on sealed archives—actual handwritten letters Nellie had penned to her mentor over a hundred years earlier. I geeked out over holding something my bold protagonist had once touched. For the first time, I began to understand who she really was.
As excited as I was by that trip, it wasn’t enough to get me writing regularly again. Doubt is a tough dragon to slay. It was easier to sightsee for the sake of research (fun) than it was to return to a manuscript that had a dull middle and needed help (work).
The second trip, in 2015, was to New York City. There I visited the locales that would make their appearance in the yet-to-be completed book, including Bellevue Hospital, City Hall Park, and what remained of the asylum on Roosevelt Island (it was Blackwell’s Island in Nellie’s day).
While this research would make for richer storytelling, it would all be for naught until I sat myself down and finished the damn thing. Nellie’s story was too important. I felt, strangely, I’d be letting her down if I abandoned it.
Oh, how naïve I’d been years before, worrying about the publishing end when I’d barely gotten underway on my first draft! I was now enmeshed in the hard, sometimes excruciatingly painful, business of writing the novel itself. The challenge wasn’t with the industry or the state of publishing, or if I’d be able to get an agent. Those would come in due time. What I needed to overcome first was the war going on inside myself.
I needed to become the person who could write the book, while I was writing the book. I know it sounds crazy, but I had to proceed as if I had street cred (I didn’t), imposter syndrome wasn’t something that paralyzed me with fear (it did), and that no matter what, success would be inevitable (the odds were against me). It was the only way to keep going.
So I set to work again.
By the time 2016 rolled around, I had a finished manuscript that had undergone several drafts and been read by a few beta readers. It was time for an agent (I’d decided to traditionally publish). It was also at this time that my family moved. There wasn’t much progress in the months spent packing and unpacking, but by the time we were reasonably settled in, I delved into the nail-biting world of query letter writing, where every word must be put on trial for its life.
I did my homework, reading up on the do’s and don’ts of agent queries, most of them written by agents themselves who had plenty of examples of how authors shoot themselves in the foot with poorly written query letters. Oh, the anguish of penning that one-page, single-spaced letter. I remember eating a lot of chocolate in this phase. Eventually, I decided to pay a professional to help me write a strong query that would get results.
And it did, but the process wasn’t fast. I sent out a dozen queries and waited. When those failed to grab interest, I sent out a few more. And waited some more. Months passed. Self-doubt resumed. The, Am I just a hack? question loomed large. Finally, I heard back from an agent who was interested. She’d been a long-time fan of Nellie Bly since her childhood and was interested in taking on the project.
But the offer came with contingencies: she would represent me if I could improve the “sagging middle” of the manuscript and write a more compelling ending. I agreed to make the edits and get back with her in a few months’ time.
By early 2017, I’d managed to edit my novel to my agent’s specifications. For eighteen months, she sent the manuscript out to editors at the Big Five houses. Rejections came in, each one more soul-crushing than the last. All would eventually decline. I’d hit the nadir of my novel-writing journey. My agent and I decided to amicably part ways.
I’d heard about a traditional publisher that didn’t require an agent, a house putting out some really good, award-winning books. Their point of difference was that they required the would-be author to crowdfund their novel. In this way, the readers were the gatekeepers, not the agents.
It sounded like a good idea. It wasn’t.
In order to pre-sell 750 books (the minimum required to land a deal), I needed a ready audience, a following. I had a Facebook page with about 350 followers. That was it. I didn’t even have a Facebook author page. Nor did I interact on Instagram, Twitter, or Goodreads. My campaign ran 90 long days. Friends and family stepped up to the plate and supported me (God bless them), but the rest of those 600 books I needed to sell? It never happened.
I moved on, researching smaller publishers who didn’t require an agent. At the same time, I decided to get a developmental edit. I hooked up with Historical Editorial, one of the best decisions along this labyrinthian route I made. They focus solely on the historical fiction genre. Some of the comments I can remember after my editor, Jenny Quinlan, read my manuscript were, “we can make this better together” and my personal favorite, the one I reminded myself of whenever I was feeling especially vulnerable: “It’s extremely well-written. You don’t suck!”
Jenny helped me mine the character-building elements my story needed, namely, Nellie’s childhood, inner weaknesses, and motivations. We agreed a first-person narrative would better capture her inner dialog. Both these changes would prove to be the steps necessary to take my story to the next level, something it would need if I wanted a traditional publishing deal.
A writing buddy of mine got a deal with a small publisher at this time. She encouraged me to submit to the publisher, Cynren Press, too. I was unconvinced. What were the odds? But if I’d learned anything thus far, it was that I couldn’t predict the next bend in the road.
I submitted a query letter and three chapters, and in less than ten days I heard back (lightning speed compared to the bigger publishers). Cynren wanted the full. A month later, I had an offer. It wasn’t the big publisher I’d had in mind all those months (ahem, years) ago, but they were traditional, and from my friend’s own experience, I knew they would be collaborative from everything from my bio, to the cover, to the final edit.
As I plug away at Cynren’s edits and all the other moving parts involved in the launch of a novel (building my following on social media, creating my website, blogging, etc.) I’m reminded of what I set out to do. I wanted to write a novel, and I did. I wanted to get an agent, and I did. I wanted to be published traditionally, and I will be soon. There were surprises and pitfalls along the way, things I would’ve done differently, but I’m more convinced than ever that what happened was meant to be.
After all, the path to publication isn’t a straight one. And that’s the learning: every writer’s journey is only ever going to be her own unique experience.
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Tonya Mitchell’s debut novel, A Feigned Madness, is the tale of pioneering journalist Nellie Bly and her ten-day undercover ordeal in an insane asylum in 1887. It came out by Cynren Press in October 2020. Tonya’s short fiction has appeared in The Copperfield Review, Words Undone, and The Front Porch Review, as well as various anthologies, including Furtive Dalliance, Welcome to Elsewhere, and Glimmer and Other Stories and Poems for which she won the Cinnamon Press award in fiction. She is a self-professed Anglophile and is obsessed with all things relating to the Victorian period. She is a member of the Historical Novel Society North America and resides in Cincinnati, OH with her husband and three wildly energetic sons. Find her on social media. Twitter @tremmitchell Instragram @tmitchell.2012 Facebook @TonyaMitchellAuthor
Find out more about her and her book on her website: https://www.tonyamitchellauthor.com/
https://www.cynren.com/catalog/a-feigned-madness
About A Feigned Madness
A Feigned Madness, Tonya Mitchell
The insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island is a human rat trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out. —Nellie Bly
Elizabeth Cochrane has a secret.
She isn’t the madwoman with amnesia the doctors and inmates at Blackwell’s Asylum think she is.
In truth, she’s working undercover for the New York World. When the managing editor refuses to hire her because she’s a woman, Elizabeth strikes a deal: in exchange for a job, she’ll impersonate a lunatic to expose a local asylum’s abuses.
When she arrives at the asylum, Elizabeth realizes she must make a decision—is she there merely to bear witness, or to intervene on behalf of the abused inmates? Can she interfere without blowing her cover? As the superintendent of the asylum grows increasingly suspicious, Elizabeth knows her scheme—and her dream of becoming a journalist in New York—is in jeopardy.
A Feigned Madness is a meticulously researched, fictionalized account of the woman who would come to be known as daredevil reporter Nellie Bly. At a time of cutthroat journalism, when newspapers battled for readers at any cost, Bly emerged as one of the first to break through the gender barrier—a woman who would, through her daring exploits, forge a trail for women fighting for their place in the world.
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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips
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I love a good research tale. From a fellow Hisfic writer, good luck with sales!