Lessons from a Bad First Novel
I wrote and published a book. It sucked. Let’s talk about it.
I remember finishing it on a euphoric high.
It was 2 am on a spring night in 2015. I was blasting “Trap Door” by OneRepublic on Grooveshark, writing “THE END, FOR NOW” in bold letters at the bottom of the page. I leaned back in my chair with a big dumb grin on my face.
It’s done, I thought. I just finished the first of many books, the beginning of an era. This book will be my biggest contribution to the literary world- an actual origin story for Peter Pan that fits the pre-established meta and opens the lore to something even bigger. I even gave it a great name- Second to the Right.
Hoo, boy. If only I knew the kind of journey I’d be taking. It had to be done, it felt horrible afterward, but it was the best learning experience I could get. I learned more about the publishing world, literary agents, and pitches in those years than in any class or video.
It would be enough to write an article about it six years later. And it all started with publishing a really bad novel.
Here’s how it all went down.
